Tall & Urban News

Real estate non-broking consultancy firm The Guardians Real Estate Advisory has bought a 7,500-square-foot (696-square-meter) office at ONE BKC, one of the prime commercial buildings at the Bandra Kurla complex in Mumbai, for Rs 30 crore (US$300 million).

The deal culminated at a price of Rs 40,000 (US$537) per square foot (US$5,745 per square meter) the company said. The office has been purchased in Tower C of the building and it plans to turn it into their head office. The firm is currently based out of another marquee project in BKC called The Capital from where it plans to shift out in the month of September 2020.

The purchase has been made to reduce the recurring cost of the lease and comes at the back of the firm announcing record sales of Rs 318 crore (US$3.1 billion) on Akshaya Tritiya, during the lockdown, the company said in a statement.

The firm plans to close the purchase with internal funds and has already made a substantially large down payment.

“Around 70 percent of the payment for the property has been made and we plan to shift during the auspicious days of Navratri this year,” said Kaushal Agarwal, chairman, The Guardians Real Estate Advisory.

“The response at our mandated projects post the lockdown gave us the confidence to proceed with the purchase,” he said.

ONE BKC is among the most sought-after commercial projects in BKC. The building has noteworthy clients like Bank of America, Facebook, Merril Lynch, Cisco, Amazon, and also Brett Lee’s F45 Gymnasium and Fitness Studio.

Recently, Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management won the bid to acquire two floors of office space in Mumbai's business district of BKC from the grounded Jet Airways recently for Rs 490 crore (US$4.9 billion) a price which is roughly 25 percent lower than the market price.

JLL India had facilitated the sale of IDBI Towers spread across 3 lakh square feet (300,000 square feet / 27,870 square meters) to Securities Exchange Board of India in the third quarter of 2018 that had fetched over Rs 900 crore (US$9 billion) at Rs 30,000 (US$402 per square foot) per square foot (US$3,252 per square meter). 

Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) initiated BKC in the 1970s to decongest the existing office hubs in the city. Initially, oil companies, consulates and banks occupied this district.

In 2010, the Bharat Diamond Bourse (BDB), the world’s largest diamond bourse started operations to facilitate diamond traders in India. This attracted many other related companies to BKC to start operations in this area.

A few iconic buildings One BKC, The Capital, Maker Maxity, Godrej BKC, TCG Financial Centre, Platina and FIFC Tower were developed in the last decade.

BKC houses large corporates primarily from non-IT categories such as Banks, Insurance companies and other government institutions. The growth driver for this area has been large industries and high-quality office buildings followed by better connectivity infrastructure.

With no addition to the supply in the second quarter of 2020, the BKC sub-market stock stood at 9.8 million square feet (910,449 square meters). The vacancy rate of BKC is the lowest in Mumbai which is below 5 percent.

For more on this story, go to Money Control.