NEW DELHI – The U.S government is planning to sell its real estate properties in India. Property consultancy, Knight Frank has been hired by U.S government to perform valuation and strategic review of all its real estate properties (amounting to thousands of crores) scattered across India, reports Ravi Teja Sharma of ET Bureau.
The U.S government properties that were acquired at low rates over the years, includes embassies, consulates, offices, residences, schools and libraries. Also, these properties are spread across prime cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. But in today’s date, such property prices have touched the sky due to the booming real estate condition of the country from the past half-a-decade.
According to sources, “The strategic review and valuation is being done to understand the best use of all properties, including selling some of them.” whereas, the U.S embassy stayed numb to an email query regarding this process. Adding to it, the firm has made no remark on market speculation, according to a spokesperson from Knight Frank.
For instance, few months back, it was reported that U.S government had sold Washington House, the Altamount Road residential building in South Mumbai, to Lodha Group for a whopping 375 crore. Lincoln House, U.S. government’s sprawling office building in Breach Candy was valued at over 1000 crore, even though the building suffered legal issues due to which the property sale was held up.
Earlier, the U.S embassy had attempted to sell a bungalow that spans over two acre of land in New Delhi’s Lutyens Bungalow Zone, one of the posh localities in India. The U.S. embassy was about to sell the property to a private developer but failed to close the deal as the foreign ministry turned down the sale since the transaction value was less than the market value of the property.
