Mumbai plot sold for Rs 600 crore

South Mumbai property redeveloper Haresh Mehta, who was in possession of the property for the past two years, sold it to theLodha Group, it is learned. The Lodhas have already announced a residential project on this land.

Last year, this paper had reported how the prime property had originally been sold for peanuts by the MP government-owned Provident Investment Company Ltd.

Mehta’s company, Rohan Lifescapes, sold around five lakh square feet to Lodha about a month ago. In 2010, the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase invested Rs 160 crore in the first phase of Mehta’s Rohan Lifescapes’ Kalachowkie project. JP Morgan’s arm was to receive around 26% stake in the project and the deal was likely to fetch an internal rate of return of 24-25% a year. However, Mehta decided to put the entire project on the block recently and found a willing buyer in Lodha.

The sprawling plot has a controversial past. It was owned by Provident Investment Company Ltd, a MP government undertaking, when it decided to call for tenders in 2002. The highest bidder was Esque Finmark, a firm owned by a politically connected developer, Paras Porwal. What raised eyebrows was when it was discovered that the highest bid was just Rs 1.76 crore, a price of a mid-sized apartment. Although the real estate market was not exactly booming in 2002, the plot could have still fetched at least Rs 160 acre at Rs 20 crore an acre.

Posted on Jun 30 2012. Filed under Mumbai. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry