Living With The Stars

For a discerning buyer looking to acquire a luxury pad in Mumbai, Vithal Nagar Co-operative Housing Society in the suburbs may not sound like a great address. But, what if this is where Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s Juhu bungalow Pratiksha is located? That information is certainly going to draw in several loaded home buyers. Because of Bachchan’s presence here, the location has turned into a prestigious one.Residents take pride in being part of this address. Prices are higher as it is counted as a prominent address.

Apartment prices at Anuradha Satyamurthy Residency, the seven-storey building that shares the compound wall with Bachchan’s bungalow Pratiskha, are around 20% higher than other buildings in Mumbai’s Juhu area, home to several Bollywood stars.Builder KV Satyamurthy converted his bungalow, built in 1962, into this high-rise apartment in 2001. He has retained two top floor terrace apartments for himself, and sold the other five that fetched him nearly 20% premium, and still continues to be hot property.

When Bollywood actor Vidya Balan and her husband Siddharth Roy Kapoor decided to buy a 5,500-sq-ft sea-facing apartment in Praneta on Juhu Tara Road in Mumbai, their decision pushed up prices in the building by around 10% immediately, and more after that. Currently, prices in other buildings on Juhu Tara Road range from Rs55,000 to Rs65,000 per sq ft depending on the development and amenities offered, whereas prices in Praneta are over Rs1 lakh per sq ft.

Be it in Bollywood, sports, the corporate world or investment banking, all achievers want a good lifestyle and few localities offer the same.Profile matters! Usually an achiever or celebrity looks for a neighbourhood with similar sort of profiles around him or her. Birds of a feather flock together, and that’s how the premium also starts getting built. For example,after a housewarming party at HDFC vice chairman and CEO Keki Mistry’s house at Raheja Vivarea in Mahalaxmi the premium also started getting built in.Last Diwali, prices in the tower overlooking the Arabian Sea and the Race Course were between Rs45,000 and Rs47,000 per sq ft. Now, prices here have risen to nothing less than Rs60,000 per sq ft.

Similarly, the third block in Bangalore’s Koramangala area is the city’s most-sought-after residential address. This area, with its wide tree-lined avenues and a mix of luxury apartments, commercial structures and posh bungalows, counts Biocon’s chairperson and managing director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Infosys co-founders Nandan Nilekani and Kris Gopalakrishnan among some prominent personalities residing here.The rate at Bangalore’s next best address Koramangala 100 -feet road is around 20% lower when compared to this locality’s Rs24,000 to Rs28,000 per sq ft range.

While the fact that celebrities in a neighbourhood do impact property prices positively remains true across most markets, it does come with its own pitfalls, particularly if the celebrity is known for negative reasons. It could also be a problem if the celeb is too popular with fans, who choose to camp outside his house day in and day out.Fortunately for Bachchan’s neighbour of 40 yrs, Satyamurthy, the experience has been good over all these years as he and almost everybody known to the Bollywood superstar will count him as a sophisticated gentleman and a peaceful neighbour.So, if you are looking for that swanky luxury pad next to a celebrity or an achiever, be ready to shell out a premium and also be careful about what sort of personality you are choosing to be a neighbour of.