D’Mart’s Damani Buys 28 Luxury Apartments for Rs 1,238 Cr in Country’s Largest Real Estate Deal

In what is perhaps the biggest property deals in the country, as many as 28 housing units worth Rs 1,238 crore have been bought by family members and associates of D’Mart founder Radhakrishna Damani in Mumbai, registration documents accessed by Zapkey.com showed.

This comes close on the heels of a provision in the 2023 Budget announced a few days back that was expected to have an impact on the sale of uber luxury properties from April 1. A Rs 10-crore cap has been imposed on the reinvestment of capital gains from the sale of long-term assets, including housing property. No such cap is applicable at the moment.

Some of the properties have also been bought in the names of companies, the documents showed.

The total carpet area bought by one of India’s top retailers, his associates and companies amounts to 1,82,084 square feet, including 101 car parks.

All the transactions were registered on February 3, 2023.

The buyers have purchased the apartments in Tower B of Three Sixty West located on Annie Besant Road in Worli, Mumbai. The seller is builder Sudhakar Shetty, who had partnered with real estate developer Vikas Oberoi to redevelop the project.

Most of these apartments have a carpet area of of 5,000 sq ft, and cost Rs 40-50 crore on average.

Sudhakar Shetty’s company Skylark Buildcon, which is a partner in this project, had taken a loan of Rs 1,000 crore from DHFL (now Piramal Finance) in 2019 at an interest rate of 14.22 percent and a tenure of 72 months (48-month moratorium and 24-month repayment period). Units in Oberoi 360 West were provided as collateral, per data provided by Propstack.

“We can expect many more luxury home deals to be registered before March 31, 2023, before the new provision kicks in,” said Sandeep Reddy, Founder, Zapkey.com.

On February 4, Mumbai-based Oberoi Realty said in a regulatory filing that in December 2022, its shareholders had approved the purchase or acquisition of residential premises in the project Three Sixty West constructed by Oasis Realty, for up to Rs 4,000 crore. It was a material related party transaction, it added.

Oberoi Realty said the company had concluded the purchase or acquisition of residential premises in the project. The company said it had purchased a total carpet area of 5,23,039 sq ft.

The total number of units purchased is 63, while the total amount of consideration paid by the company is Rs 3,403 crore.

“Consequently, the company has also recovered its entire funding towards construction cost and other deposits, as well as its share of profit, from Oasis Realty,” it said in a regulatory filing.

The stamp duty for the purchase of the units will be available for set off to the subsequent buyer of such units for all sales that will be effected in the next three years, it said.

Three Sixty West by Oberoi Realty is a project that contains 4BHK and 5BHK units. It comprises two towers, one of which will house The Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the other will have luxury residences managed by the global hospitality chain. The sea-view project presumably gets its name because its height is 360 metres, and all apartments face the west.

Earlier, in one of the biggest property deals in Mumbai, Radhakishan Damani and his brother Gopikishan Damani had bought an independent house in Mumbai’s posh Malabar Hill area for Rs 1,001 crore in 2021.

The registration had taken place on March 31, 2021, the last day that the reduced 3 percent stamp duty was applicable on the sale of housing units in Maharashtra.

On August 26, 2020, the Maharashtra government had announced a temporary reduction in stamp duty on the sale of housing units from 5 percent to 2 percent until December 31, 2020, to boost the stagnant real estate market hit doubly hard by the Covid pandemic. The stamp duty applicable from January 1, 2021, until March 31, 2021, was 3 percent.

The same day, the Maharashtra government said that it would not extend the stamp duty waiver on property registrations and reverted to the earlier Ready Reckoner rates of 5 percent for the financial year 2021-22.

Radhakishan Damani’s D’Mart had also acquired seven properties worth Rs 400 crore as the retail chain set off on a property shopping spree during Covid, documents accessed by the real estate data and analytics firm Propstack had showed.

D’Mart, which has operations in 11 states and one Union Territory, has bought properties in places such as Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, and Bengaluru. The retailer typically purchases properties instead of leasing them.

(Moneycontrol has written to D’Mart and Oberoi Realty for their response. The story will be updated when we hear from them.)

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