Dance classes for your children? By Hema Malini. Cooking classes? By Tarla Dalal. A British governess? Ms McGonagall is available. The check list goes on. The car mechanics specialise in Jaguars and Mercs. Liposuction is available. So are tulips from Amsterdam, orchids from Thailand. And a membership at the Yacht Club. This will be daily life at Petit Towers, a 24-storey super-exclusive tower being built by the Tatas on the busy Kemp’s Corner in south Mumbai. ‘‘The facilities we offer will attract people who value privacy,’’ a spokesman for Tata Housing told The Indian Express. Not surprisingly, that includes the rich but reclusive: diamond merchants, international traders and Indians who’ve made fortunes abroad.The company fiercely guards that privacy. It will not release the names of people who have already bought 2/3 bedroom-hall-kitchen flats of 1,500 sq ft to 2,100 sq ft.This is the heart of the golden triangle — no larger than a few cricket stadia — an area where Mumbai’s economic downturn and the real-estate bust have little meaning. Only four flats are left in Tata’s new housing showpiece, built next to an old Parsi sanatorium.‘‘The golden triangle continues to rule as the most expensive residential property micro market in India,’’ notes a new, quarterly review by international property consultants Knight and Frank.Indeed, in the last four months, estate agents confirm those findings: that there’s been a boom in ‘‘whale’’ transactions, deals where many flats worth more than Rs 5 crore have been sold, where rates hover around Rs 20,000 per sq ft, the same as booming and ultra-clean Shanghai. As Petit Towers, and a handful of other new buildings indicate, there’s no slowdown here. Two 60-storey owers of Shapoorji Pallonji and a 40-storey tower of Shreepati builders are coming up at Tardeo. So why does the golden triangle command such prices? After all, rentals in the same area — and indeed all over south Mumbai — have been down for the last two years. Stamp duties too have fallen.It’s just that Mumbai has people with humungous amounts of money to spend, they want to live in the golden triangle, and there just aren’t enough new apartments for them. ‘‘The market here will not go down unless there’s an earthquake or drought,’’ says estate agent Ashok Narang.The desire for a flawless flat that serves as an island of luxury and isolation from Mumbai’s worsening chaos is growing fast. Outside the golden triangle, rentals are rising only in swank new buildings.‘‘The reason simply being the lack of quality housing available for this segment of buyers who had to settle for rented homes,’’ says the Knight and Frank study. ‘‘Recognising the high demand for this segment in the income group of Rs 8,00,000 to Rs 3 million, developers have started building affordable homes.’’So while the super-elite cluster in the golden triangle, the other new developments are concentrated in the western suburbs and the decrepit mill lands of central Mumbai. Once dowdy areas like Parel have sprouted addressess like Phoenix Towers, over 20 storey buildings like Kalpatru are rising from the rubble of old textile mills.For those who can’t make it to the golden triangle, this will have to do. ‘‘It will offer,’’ muses the Knight and Frank report, ‘‘a good opportunity for those wishing to have a South Mumbai address.’’ Indeed.
