Hyderabad Real Estate : Bargains around the corner ?

As the year draws to a close, the realtors and agents of Hyderabad have been a nervous wreck. Recent ruckus around assigned lands and land cieling has created some major headaches for the real estate bigwigs. I am not sure if this is going to affect the political and business circles, but a lot of the investors and realtors who hold onto land and sell it for a profit may be affected.

Government passed an amendment to some land act that allows the restoration of land to the original owners or public purpose. 40 Lac acres of land may be affected by this and other land cieling acts. Realtors are fearful that a release of the survey #'s etc., will bring the prices down to bare minimum and are desperately trying to find buyers for their land. Local media sources are reporting that outskirts prices like in ghatkesar, areas beyond shamshabad have fallen by 10-15% per acre in some areas.

IMHO, bargains are here to stay for the next 2 to 3 months and this may be the right time to get in if you are able to squeeze the cash starved developers/realtors. Remember the Buy Low, Sell High that we never seem to execute well.. may be this is the time to practice that.

Please remember that I am only writing what I hear and feel, you should do your homework before you make your move. Its your money.. so, Invest wisely !!!.

Wish you all a happy and prosperous 2007.

Hyderabad and the end of another year

As 2006 comes to an end, I wanted to share some of the happenings in the past few weeks with you all.

On the realestate front, the market seems a little soft and even the big wigs are communicating the same. Since the TRS win in karimnagar, Vijayawada and Guntur seem to have a major run up in values with values now running upto 3x.

Dont believe if a developer tells you that they have sold 80% of the project and that you only have a few chances left. This month a friend of mine approached a developer and was able to negotiate him down by 800/sqft in cost of an apartment just by leveraging the fact that he can bring a volume of upto 5 units. Even if you are approaching for 1 unit, developers with large projects are desperate, leverage it as much as you can. Some of the good projects are doing well, that doesnt mean that everything should be expensive.

The past 1.5 weeks have been fun, a close friend of mine is back in Hyderabad for vacation and we enjoyed many nights with dinners at Shikaar, Far-East, Our Place, Angeethi, Zaffran, Chutneys, a few late night coffee sessions at Ohri's and daily gatherings at the coffee day & Barista.

Today we decided to go watch the NTR movie Rakhi at Hitec Theater in Madhapur. It was my first black ticket movie after return to Hyderabad. Outside it looks like an apartment building but the interior is excellent with lots of room and stadium seating, extra leg room that I have never seen in any other theater and a real DTS surround system.

Rakhi [ telugu movie, starring NTR, Illeana and Charmi ] was heavy on sister senti as the name suggests.. fans of NTR may be a little down since its not a mass movie. I think women will really enjoy it and it has a valid message asking women to fight for themselves. It could have been a little short on some scenes that were too obvious/expected, but overall it was a good movie to watch. NTR's performance was the best I ever watched and he reminded me of Sr. NTR in some scenes. One drawback was a confused director [ krishna vamsi ].. Scenes were contradicting, a strong message about women being victimized intertwined with songs that expose Illeana to the max.

Will be leveraging the next 3 days to go watch some more movies I missed including Dhoom2.

More later.. Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year !!!

Hyderabadi Traffic : A Repost of Anonymous Comments

I realized that a good post was stuck in the comments section of the blog.. So, I decided to make it public so that everyone can enjoy it.. Thanks AnoNymous

Hyderabad traffic is the world's best. So unruly and so ultra-smooth that u can even drive blindfolded and reach your destination with your hand in pocket. So disciplined and so orderly, that it would put Singapore and Switzerland in the shade.

It would instead put them in a blade packet My goodness, the crowd is so well-behaved that when u drive, they would stop and wave their hands with their hands tied behind their arse.

The great traffic cops who appear once in a bluemoon are very alert and helpful that if u ask them for a direction, they would point at the same direction u came from. Their traffic guidance is impeccable, when they wave their hands, they look like beach volleyball players.

Buffoloes make a better cop, they atleast stop the traffic to allow their breed to move across the road majestically.

Once on our roads, everybody is a law unto themselves. they care a damn and make a sham over even a small hungama. The finest of gallias and tallis follows when they let loose a volley of words from their mouth.

Paan - wah! the guys and hefty mams who swish the reddish paan do so with grace and ease that sees the juice flow at an incredible 2,000,000 mph .

The road diggers dig every place they take a fancy to. They dig and leave a creater that looks as if some meteroite from space has come and plonked itself there. The dug up space are left unattended to for decades.

That is Hyderabad - a city of nawabs

R2I Financial Data Consolidation : A Tip

The # of login/passwords that we remember in current day is mind boggling. 2 to 3 years ago I ran into this service called yodlee and I have become a fan since and have used it extensively during my stint in the US. For those of you who do not know what its all about, Yodlee allows you to link all your bank account balances, assets, investments, reward programs into one single account where I can monitor all transactions and movements.

Recently I was almost giving up on this service since my accounts are now moving to Indian Banks and Brokerages. I tried a search for ICICI and was surprised to see the support for Indian banks too. So, if you are in US and have Indian accounts or vice-versa, you should be able to link all of them together into a dashboard.

You can sign up for this in 2 ways, you can sign up on yodlee directly [ I recommend this method ] by clicking Here. Select Log into US$ account and then select register. Alternate option is to pick from one of your banks that already uses the platform [ listed here ].

They employ a # of software engineers in bangalore, so another reason to support their services I guess ;-)