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Tata Building $7,800 Apartments in Mumbai
theodp writes "What do you do for an encore after you've shown the world it's possible to build a $2,000 car? Ratan Tata, head of India's giant Tata conglomerate, now plans to build, 30 miles outside of Mumbai, 1,200 tiny apartments that will sell for $7,800 to $13,400 each. Sure, they're small (floor plans), but keep in mind that you can pay a quarter of a million bucks for a 250-sq.-ft. studio in the East Village. Time reports that Tata has had to beef up security to handle the rush of buyers who want to plunk down their $200 deposits (yes, that's two hundred dollars!). Who would've thought you could make IKEA homes look pricey?" The Businessweek.com article says that the apartments are aimed at someone making $6,000 to $10,000 per year (Time says $5,000). In Mumbai, a call center operator with 10 to 20 years of experience barely qualifies at $6,400 annually. 70% of the country's 1.2 billion people live on 1/20 as much.
Don't worry, though; you should be OK in one. It's India, so you're much more likely to hit a pedestrian than another car.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
unsafe
As safe or safer than a motorcycle or bicycle. The word "unsafe" is thrown around all the time without regard for alternatives and real-life trade-offs.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
We don't want another Cortlandt Homes incident.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
The median price of a house in Detroit is $7500. Floorplans vary, but they are larger than these apartments. Home prices are relative.
I'm sure people are happy to buy a nice place in Mumbai, so the market supports higher prices. No one wants to live in a corrupt one-party third-world conflict zone like Detroit.
This is one the the wisest investments Tata has ever made, and will fill an important niche in Indian urban living.
The economic difference between the rich and the poor is so vast, that if you are making 10k+ a year you are very rich by a normal villager's perspective...the problem is unless you are living in a rural area, there are not many places for you to live unless you want to live other than the slums or in a wealthy neighborhood.
Of course this is just a generalization, but if you ever go to India, and truly experience it outside of the MNC bubble, you will see why something like this is needed.
-n00b
These apartments are extremely tiny at only 283 - 465 sq ft and for $7,800 - $13,400 that isn't really that cheap as it is around $28-29 per sq ft. The condo I own in Houston only cost me $43 per sq ft and they are now going for much cheaper than that after the economy meltdown.
70% of the country's 1.2 billion people live on 1/20 as much.
True, but not relevant.
This is aimed at the middle class in India, which numbers 50 - 100 million now and is expected to grow rapidly :
India's middle class is expected to swell almost 12-fold from its size of 50 million people to over 583 million - some 41% of the population.
Let's see, 10 million homes for $ 10K each is $ 100 billion USD - a market worth going after.
Sorry to sound snooty, but that's my gut reaction to the "this is unsafe!" comments. Unsafe by American/European standards, probably. Unsafe compared to Indian options? Ha.
Some photos of life in Delhi (a bit less "European" than Mumbai), including the inside of a couple homes, here. (Disclosure: that's a link to my old travel blog.)
We should praise improvement, not demand perfection.
We'll throw in the crackhouse on the left ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Unfortunately, employed workers in the West (the US at least) have been creating shoddy, overpriced products that no one wants for some time now:
Giant cars that get horrid gas mileage; doctors and prescription drugs that routinely cause more harm than good; tiny, uninsulated, overcrowded apartments that cost more than houses; buggy, barely-functional software; industries that are less energy-efficient than those in developing countries; financial services that border on fraud.
And that's not even including any of the horrid government "services" which employ nearly half of everyone and no one has any say in even purchasing: prisons for substance abusers; welfare for immigrants; jack-booted thugs who murder Americans; spooks who spy on us; soldiers who waste trillions of dollars making us less secure; and of course generous hand-outs for banks and wealthy corporations.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I must admit, I'd buy and drive a Nano here in the US for in-town commuting.
But I'd totally shove a Hayabusa engine in it.
safe is the biggest marketing scam in western society. SUVs were born to market safe vehicles for hockey moms, desire for safety got Bush re-elected.
What are you doing on Slashdot? I know that we love car analogies, but Nanobusas and Fisker Karma double-entendres require a degree of car-guy knowledge not usually found in computer geeks.
Then again, I'm here too.
Should have put this in my first reply. I know that I have seen 'apartment' used as something you buy in NY-based sitcoms (e.g. "Seinfeld").
Also, the first paragraph on Wikipedia's entry says that it can be either (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartment):
An apartment is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Apartments may be owned (by an owner/occupier) or rented (by tenants).
Dude, have you ever been to India? You're likely to hit ANYTHING in a city. Cars, people on foot, people bicycles, rickshaws (human-powered and automotive),and Shiva forbid a cow wanders into the road at the wrong moment.
Indian traffic is a good example of anarchy in practice.
Have you seen how they build the average home? A normal priced home in my area is around $300k and if you see how they build them I don't see how these cheap structures could be much worse and remain standing.
Do you have any idea of the markup they have(had) on those homes? Are you thinking of a prebubble-burst price?
How much is tied up in impact fees, taxes, other miscellaneous hardware, not to mention the land?
What's the square footage of these homes? A 4k square foot monster? 2k 3 bedroom with a huge kitchen?
People don't NEED* that much space. In poorer areas, that 2k square foot house would be a multifamily structure. India is still poorer.
So everything costs less - labor, materials, land, etc... And the resources required for a 'McMansion' - a cheaply constructed large house, can instead be used to build smaller homes much better.
These are likely to be cheap and small though - but still better than what the renters/buyers would otherwise have.
Like with the Tata car - you have to realize that even though the car isn't safe compared to other cars, the market for the most part consists of those that would otherwise be riding mopeds/motorcycles, which aren't safer than the car, especially when you consider the things they do with it - like the pictures where they have seven people on the same bike at the same time, or are carrying a huge load of ducks or firewood.
Risk management and resource usage wise, the Tata is a good choice.
*I will admit that it can be nice
I don't read AC A human right
Tata is NOT saving costs by compromising on materials. So how are they saving costs? They're going in for cheaper land that's farther out from the city, and they're paying below market price for it, because they're offering the landholders an amortized profit-sharing across many years. They're then organizing a large number of builders to create entire communities from scratch, including hospitals, schools, marketplaces, and a variety of amenities where there were none before. They're building entire townships, and not just some homes. This is obviously a very capital-intensive approach. Call it the Las Vegas strategy: buying land in the middle of nowhere at low cost, and then building an entire self-supporting community there.
The International Building Code is an American building code. Americans have this strange habit of calling their stuff "world" or "international", e.g. World Series Baseball.
India has their own building code.