CHANDIGARH: A group of youth from Chandigarh have got together to organise the unorganised sector of property leasing and connecting it to the digital world and making it a customer friendly process. This startup is designed to cater leasing solutions to all the sectors of the industry i.e. commercial, residential, warehouses and industrial – one-stop shop for all your leasing problems. It caters to both landlord and tenants, besides also giving assistance in rented accommodation. Every property listed has its genuine pictures and no property is listed without the pictures.

The core team of the startup also includes Founder & Chairman Manmeet Singh, 38, Neha Duggal, 30, from the hospitality background, and Sakshi Bagga, 25 from management background, both co-founders of the startup. etolet.in was launched on Friday at INNOV8 Co-Working Space in Industrial Area Phase I.
Giving the information, Manmeet Singh, said, “I am a landlord myself and well aware of all the problems faced by landlords and tenants these days in leasing their properties. After facing all the challenges we decided to launch a solution for leasing properties.”
He said, “Locality view is our outstanding feature which showcases the entire locality including parking area to have a better view of the surroundings. We have special feature that let you save your favorite property on SMS. It sends you the required details and you can access it without the internet.”
“We also provide assistance for every transaction which is made between landlord and tenant is through etolet.in where we also process properties that fall under low foot fall markets. We are online but are physically present for Executing Agreements and handing over the possessions to tenants”, added Mr. Singh. The startup etolet.in promises to give full assistance to landlords at their door step and online assistance to tenants.

Union home ministry has tasked Custodian of Enemy Property (CEP) of India to prepare a complete status list of enemy properties following which the Centre plans to act and take possession of all such properties.

A top government source said there are 9547 enemy properties, having estimated worth of more than Rs. 1.1 lakh crore, scattered in important cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bhopal, Hyderabad and Lucknow etc.

“There are court cases pending against 1215 properties. Most of the other properties are under illegal possession and occupation at prime locations in key cities, and can be used to serve government needs that are falling short of space in premium locations.”

Enemy properties are those abandoned properties which the government took over when their owners chose to leave India and move to Pakistan and China after Partition and the 1965 and 1971 wars.

“It is better if the government takes possession of all such enemy properties before they also get mired in court cases that linger on for years,”said the source.

Recently, the government has taken possession of 31 such properties and decided to give their possession to the central reserve police force (CRPF) and border security force (BSF) that facing space crunch for their offices.

The Government of India had created the office of CEP under the Enemy Property Act, 1968 soon after the 1965 war to tackle the growing list of abandoned buildings and their encroachment.

The new move comes after the government failed to pass an amendment in law governing enemy property.

The amended act says once the custodian’s office becomes responsible for a property, it shall continue to remain enemy property even if the original owner ceases to the country’s foe. Besides, the law of succession will not apply to enemy property and cannot be transferred as well.

The bill failed to pass in the Rajya Sabha because of protests by the opposition parties following which an ordinance was promulgated to keep the amendment in force.

MUMBAI: Mark Zuckerberg-owned social networking behemoth Facebook is the latest social media titan to join the race for the media rights of BCCI’s biggest property, the Indian Premier League. Twitter has already evinced interest in IPL’s digital rights.

BCCI sources confirmed to ET that Facebook has picked up the IPL tender and is most likely to bid for the digital rights of the league. A Facebook spokesperson, however, said: “We don’t comment on rumors and speculation.”
Earlier this year, Facebook had streamed Premier Futsal on its video platform Facebook Live. In August, it streamed Wayne Rooney’s testimonial match between Manchester United and Everton. It also allowed fans to chat with other fans, send wishes to Wayne, and learn how to donate to his foundation. In the summers, Facebook streamed nine USA Basketball exhibition games live.

“We’re focused on helping our partners experiment with a variety of Live content types — from ‘behind the scenes’ access to first-person athlete Q&As to live games. We have seen great results when we have streamed games live — and continue to be interested in testing the viability of this content on Facebook,” the spokesperson added. “We will continue to work with our partners to find the best ways to connect their content to the world’s largest community of sports fans.”
Interestingly, Facebook has been seeing a jump in conversations during IPL year-on-year. During IPL 2016, Facebook said that the league drove the highest level of conversation it has measured for any IPL season — 360 million posts, comments, and likes.

Facebook pages of the IPL and eight teams totalled over 140 million video views during the season. Also, during the 50-day tournament, the IPL’s Facebook page added over two million new fans touching 18.3 million subscribers.
Facebook will join the likes of Amazon, Twitter, Reliance Jio, Times Internet and broadcasters like Star India and Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN). ET was first to report that Twitter has also joined the race, hinting at a very competitive bidding for the digital rights.

It’s a Monday afternoon, and property tycoon Cecil Chao and his daughter, Gigi, are poring over architectural plans in their 49th-floor headquarters in Hong Kong’s Central Plaza, their backs to sweeping views of Victoria Harbour. The chairman and vice chairman of Cheuk Nang Holdings are busy with an array of big residential and commercial projects in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Malaysia.

Their professional relationship belies a lot of history. Generating headlines worldwide, Cecil offered $65 million four years ago to any man who could woo his daughter into marriage, though she was already married to a female partner. Some 10,000 men responded. Headlines flared again in early 2014 when he doubled the offer and Gigi countered with a public letter to Cecil asking for acceptance and respect.

Looking back, Cecil, 80, explains that he made the offer to give his daughter male options, believing that she had struggled to find acceptable boyfriends. After Gigi, 37, spurned the idea, he accepted her decision. “It’s her life,” he concedes. “She decides about her private life.”

For her part, Gigi, a practicing Christian, clearly loves and respects her father, believing that his inten- actions stemmed from love, not malice. “It’s been tragic and comic,” she says, “to have something so private in the open and to become a laughing stock of dinner conversations.” She says the saga helped her develop “humility, patience and character” and increased her capacity to forgive.

Still, she is weary of discussing the subject, which even now generates unwanted emails. “I’m tired of the random notices from men trying to seduce me,” she says. “It has become an engine of online fraud, with impersonators of me or my father going after these men for ‘emergency money’ while stranded abroad, or in some ‘lucrative’ deal.”

While most father-daughter bonds would likely snap under such glaring pressure, the Chaos’s has not. In Octo- ber 2014, Cecil named Gigi, the oldest of his three children and a fellow architect, the heir to the company.

In the new Cheuk Nang headquarters—the company sold nearby Cheuk Nang Plaza last year for just over $100 million—father and daughter are in constant communication. Cecil, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt with a gold iPhone in the front pocket, is positioned at the far end of his palatial office. There’s a trading terminal for his private investments as well as Chinese and European classical artwork and antiques, including his mother’s inlaid Italian marble table and six blue upholstered chairs Net Maddy.

Just outside, between Cecil’s secretary and the three-person design team, Gigi stands at a high desk wedged into an open space. Her black vest sports the insignia of Faith in Love, a foundation she started in 2008 to help economically struggling youth and elderly. Hanging on the wall are colourful contemporary prints as well as her appointment to the Hong Kong Air Cadet Corps. Books, binders, and stacks of documents are within easy reach while course notes for a law degree she’s pursuing are taped on the window, slightly obscuring the view.

Global private equity firm Blackstone Group Lp, the largest owner of office real estate in India, plans to list two separate real estate investment trusts (REITs) for its office assets with developer partners, said multiple people familiar with the development.

For its office parks in the National Capital Region (NCR), and west India (Mumbai and Pune), Blackstone will collaborate with Pune-based Panchshil Realty for a REIT with about 20-25 million so. ft of office space across cities.

The proposed REIT includes office parks and buildings, some of them jointly owned by Blackstone and Panchshil, such as Eon Free Zone and Panchshil IOCC Park in Pune, 247 Park and Express Towers in Mumbai. There are also assets Blackstone owns independently, such as the two office parks that it had bought out from IDFC Ltd in Pune and Noida, and the Oxygen SEZ in Noida.

Blackstone’s other REIT with Bengaluru-based Embassy Property Developments Pvt. Ltd will have a south India-focus. Valued at around Rs22,000 crore, this REIT will have a larger portfolio with more than 25 million sq.ft of office space. It is also at a more advanced stage, with Embassy having filed an application for approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in October Soul Crazy.

“If all goes well, the Blackstone-Embassy REIT will first go for a listing sometime in mid-2017. The Blackstone-Panchshil one is likely to file a REIT application early next year and then list at the end of 2017 or in the beginning of 2018,” said one of the persons mentioned above who did not want to be named.

As per norms, both REITs can include under-construction office space of up to 20% in each of their portfolios.

Blackstone declined to comment.

REITs are listed entities that primarily invest in leased office and retail assets, allowing developers to raise funds by selling completed buildings to investors.

Since 2006, Blackstone has invested $2.7 billion in 19 transactions involving real estate projects and currently manages the largest portfolio of office parks in India. It owns 31 million sq. ft across 16 operating office parks (apart from an additional 8 million sq. ft under development). Besides office parks, Blackstone has also started buying out retail assets such as shopping malls and has made a few residential investments in recent years.

“The Blackstone-Embassy REIT is likely to enjoy the first-mover advantage and grab the attention of investors. What will be a determining factor for the following REITs, be it Blackstone’s second with Panchshil or for the other developer-investors, is the price the first REIT commands as that will set the overall tone for office REITs,” said another second person cited above, also on condition of anonymity.

India’s real estate sector has witnessed tough times in the past three years, particularly the residential segment where sales have been slow. Property prices have stagnated, leading to a liquidity crunch for many developers. However, even in this situation, commercial office space has emerged as a bright spot with steady momentum in leasing, investors buying office space at high valuations and good demand in large cities.

Other companies acquiring and consolidating their office assets and firming up plans for a REIT are RMZ Corp. and K. Raheja Corp.

India’s largest real estate developer, DLF Ltd, is in talks with investors such as Blackstone to sell a 40% stake in its rental assets arm to raise about $2 billion, Mint had reported on 31 August.

DLF is the second largest office space owner in the country, after Blackstone.

“Blackstone has steadily built a very worthy portfolio of investible, good grade office assets. These are properties that have a good mix of tenants, combined with healthy cash flows. For investors, REIT is all about stabilized yields that entail less risk,” said Shobhit Agarwal, managing director, capital markets and international director at property consultant JLL India.

A report by India Ratings (Ind-Ra) shows a worrying trend: defaults on loans against property (LAP) are at their highest level in 2016, compared to the last five years. These delinquencies, between zero and under-2% during 2011-13, are now at 5% or more for most lenders, mainly banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs). These are already feeling the pressure of mounting bad debt from corporate borrowers. The Ind-Ra findings are significant: one, delinquencies are rising whatever the year of origin of LAPs. Two, around half of all defaults, come from high-ticket borrowers, with an exposure of Rs 50 lakh or more; the smallest ones, borrowing Rs 20 lakh or less, are best behaved. Three, most defaults are concentrated in metros and large cities, where a long property bubble is now deflating. Finally, the data goes back five years, enough time to indicate a trend.
NPA-bad-loan Being Mad
The LAP market’s growth was driven by a bubble, which turned the heads of property owners as they saw the notional values of their holdings soar, borrowing more on the back of these unreal values. Lenders jostled with each other to play along: instead of accepting the relatively stable residential property, they took on commercial or business establishments, even freehold land, as collateral. Now, if the LAP market goes belly up, it could impact credit across retail, property and corporate segments. At best, it could make lenders more risk averse and circumspect about funding; at worst, it could freeze overall credit and growth. The government and Reserve Bank of India must act fast to prevent a replay of the US subprime mortgage crisis in India. The property bubble must be allowed to deflate on its own; it will do so. Regulators must step in: LPAs must be scrutinized and collateral and margin norms tightened. Credit recovery might be tough or messy, so assets underlying LAPs should be bundled into a recovery pool, which can be auctioned off at prices the market can afford. The government should not go into bailout mode. Early action, with haircuts and rational pricing, should suffice.