 "Stocks to realty: Rakesh Jhunjhunwala buys half a building in Malabar Hill")
Seems like the Pied Piper of the Indian bourses, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is re-jigging his investment portfolio. A former real estate bear, who previously stayed away from the sector due to its presence of black money and opaque accounting norms, is now definitely betting on Mumbai’s prime real estate.
According to a report in the Economic Times, Jhunjhunwala has bought sixplush apartments, in Mumbai’s upmarket Malabar Hill area owned by Standard Chartered Bank, for Rs 176 crore.
Property consulting firm Jones Lang Lasalle had put these six premium residential apartments in Rideway Apartment on the block earlier this year. While four of the 3-bedroom apartments measure 2483.33 sq. ft each, one of the apartments is slightly biggest measuring 2612.28 square foot.
However, the icing on the cake is a 4966.66 sqaure foot duplex.The deal includes 7 garages and 7 open car parks in the building and 50% undivided share in underlying land. ( You can read the advertisement for the apartments here)
As per the advertisement, the sale took place via a bidding process. The last date of submission for the apartments was 7 October, 2013.
The apartments are owned by Standard Chartered Bank and were given as incentives and perks to their mid to top-level executives in the 1950s and 1960s. However, in the last couple of years banks have resorted to monetising their high-end properties in prime South Mumbai localities and are instead paying senior executives a component for rent.
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Citibank and GlaxoSmithKline sold their jointly owned residential building, next to Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storey house Antilla on south Mumbai’s Altamount Road, for 128 crore earlier this year toYES Bank CEO and managing director Rana Kapoor.
Even ICICI Bank is reportedly selling one of its residential buildings in central Mumbai’s Prabhadevi for about 100 crore.
Citibank also has sold more than a dozen flats in Mumbai alone. These include a flat each in Meher Apartments (Altamount Road), Kanti on Mt Mary Road in Bandra, one located off Carter Road, NCPA Apartment at Nariman Point and five apartments at Harbour Heights building in Colaba.
Bishopsgate, a five-storey building co-owned by Standard Chartered and HSBC in Breach Candy, was sold for Rs 272 crore to Peninsula Land Ltd, an Ashok Piramal Group company in 2011.
Jhunjhunwala will join the likes of Ruias of Essar group, Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry, Adi Godrej, Pranav Mody and Venugopal Dhoot who all own homes in Mumbai’s most premium pin code. According to the ET report, the combined net worth of residents of Malabar Hill is around $30 billion. ( Read the full report here.)
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