Property expo gets lukewarm response

Even though it claims to be India’s largest real estate expo, the 27th Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (MCHI)-Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (CREDAI) Property 2016 has got a lukewarm response from realtors. Several top developers are not participating in the expo this year. Only around 100 of them have turned up as compared to around 330 last year.

“Many developers have not shown an interest in participating this year due to a slowdown in the real estate market. One of the reasons is a funds crunch and developers are not spending too much money on exhibitions, preferring instead to go online to sell apartments in their projects,” said a developer from MCHI, who didn’t wish to be named.

The top groups of developers who didn’t participate in the expo this year include Lodha, Oberoi, Omkar, Rustomjee, HDIL, Hiranandani Builders, Ahuja, Shapoorji Pallonji and the Dosti Group.

Dharmesh Jain, president, MCHI, spoke about the situation in the real estate market during his inaugural speech at the expo. Mr Jain said, “I am sure we have had good days across many years in the past, as also a few bad days. I always tell people from the industry that in every industry, there are both good days and bad days.”

At the expo this year, the developers also organised a virtual expo of their projects, wherein realtors had displayed their projects online. Tejas Vyas, chairman, exhibition committee, MCHI, said, “Our decision to have the expo online has met with a good response. We have received around 15,000 leads from potential home buyers.”

The property expo is open from October 6 to October 9, with over 1 lakh visitors expected to visit. Besides Mumbai, there are projects on offer that are in the metropolitan region, Pune, Goa and Nashik.