| Manohar Joshi & Raj Thackeray bag 5-acre property.
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| Mumbai realty has a couple of new investors. Former Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi and Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackeray’s nephew Raj Thackeray have bagged the five-acre Kohinoor (No 3) Mill by bidding a whopping Rs 421 crore for the property.
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| Joshi and Thackeray almost bagged another property, the eight-acre Elphinstone Mill. But their bid fell just short of the of the Rs 441-crore quoted by Indiabulls Property. Moreover, the two have paid unheard of prices for Kohinoor Mill.
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| Based on the floor space index of the two properties, the Kohinoor Mill property has fetched the National textile Corporation a per-square-foot rate of Rs 15,000, while the Elphinstone Mill property has netted Rs 9800 per square foot. The Bombay Textile Mills land, sold Last month to Delhi-based DLF Group, went for Rs 7,500 per square foot.
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| Tariq Vaidya, head of the Asia-Pacific research wing of realty analyst Knight Frank, said, “To make the plot commercially viable as a retail mall (which seems to be the intended use of the property), the developer will have to sell it at around Rs 20,000 per square foot after development.”
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| Property consultants were also surprised at the high bid for the Elphinstone property as they felt its location made residential development the most probable choice for the developer. An acquisition cost of Rs 9800 per square foot is way too high as it is pegged at Rs 60 crore per acre.
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| “Even Rs 1-crore prime residential acre plots in Alibaug on the shorefront were found too expensive as a realty option by consumers. It will be difficult for the realty market to sustain such a spiral in acquisition,” Vaidya added.
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| Consider the acquisition of Bombay Textile Mills a month back at Rs 702 crore. The pure municipal cost worked out to Rs 7500 per square foot for the developer.
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| Earlier, the NTC’s Jupiter Mills was sold for Rs 265 crore, which worked out at the rate of Rs 3500 per square foot. The space between these two deals was a couple of months. Now only a month after the Bombay Textile Mills sale, the spiral in land acquisition has shocked realty watchers in Mumbai.
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| The Elphinstone property bids will, however, stay on hold till the Mumbai High Court disposes of a petition challenging the acquisition of the property by NTC from its original owner. The next hearing is slated for July 25.
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| Another official attached to the NTC North Division that owns the Elphinstone Mill property said, “We have received a maximum bid of Rs 441.75 crore for the mill premises that comprises 38,000 square metres of land. Since the property is under litigation, we will await the Bombay High Court’s ruling before officially announcing the successful bid. We expect a favourable ruling as there is precedent in a similar matter.”
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| The litigant, from whom NTC acquired the Elphinstone Mill property over two decades back, has challenged the provisions of the Lease Licence Act and claimed stake to the property stating that his land was wrongfully acquired by the NTC. |
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