The 41-story Altimus tower in Mumbai offers sweeping views of the Arabian Sea. In the wake of a boom in India\u2019s markets, Barclays, BlackRock, KKR, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Group have all taken up posts in this glittering glass building in the Worli neighbourhood, a former fishing village that\u2019s become a favoured residential address for the city\u2019s elite.<\/p>\n
Not far away, taxi driver Ramu Virmale is attempting to negotiate a real estate deal of his own. He and his neighbours in a low-\u00adincome pocket of Worli are hoping to win modest but modern new apartments by allowing a developer to clear away their informally built shanties and replace them with offices or luxury residential towers. It\u2019s a story being repeated across Mumbai, a packed island city where almost a quarter of the 21 million residents live in sprawling slums.<\/p>\n
As foreign banks and asset managers scramble to find room to expand, the fate of billions of dollars in real estate deals is tied up with the hopes and ambitions of the cleaners, drivers, labourers, and other service industry workers who want to maintain their own toehold in the nation\u2019s buzzing financial capital. \u201cRich or poor, we should all live with each other,\u201d Virmale says. \u201cWe too want clean, good-quality, sea-facing flats. That cannot only be for the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demand for Mumbai property is going to rise \u201cexponentially beyond imagination,\u201d predicts Niranjan Hiranandani, the billionaire owner of the property developer Hiranandani Group. But at the same time, he says, \u201cwe are talking about 5 million people that will need to be rehoused.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days prices for some apartments in Worli are on par with parts of New York, and developers are building in infinity pools, pickleball courts and other amenities to make analysts and traders feel at home. Skilled workers would prefer not to travel far in a city famous for its traffic jams and crowded public trains and buses, and companies want big, new offices that can fit their growing ranks into one location. \u201cIf you want to get the best talent, you can\u2019t put them in a shabby office,\u201d says Anshuman Magazine, the chairman and chief executive officer of India, Southeast Asia, Africa and Middle East operations at the global real estate services company CBRE Group.<\/p>\n
Office rents in prime locations climbed 23% last year, even as they rose only around 3% in Manhattan, CBRE estimates. Mumbai\u2019s main business hub \u2013 the Bandra Kurla Complex, about 8 miles from Worli \u2013 is full up, with tenants including Apple Inc., Carlyle Group and Qatar\u2019s sovereign wealth fund. Analysts estimate the city will add 350 skyscrapers in the coming years.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nLuxury towers in the Worli neighbourhood. Image: Abeer Khan\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Citigroup, HSBC Holdings Plc and other foreign companies are hunting for hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space, according to people familiar with the matter. (HSBC and Citi declined to comment.) Some businesses face waits of three to five years for new properties. In December, JPMorgan Chase & Co signed a 20-year lease with Brookfield Asset Management to occupy more than 2 million square feet of office space in the Mumbai suburb of Powai. But America\u2019s largest bank will have to wait until 2030 to move in because it\u2019s still being completed. The office will house 30 000 employees focused on artificial-intelligence-based risk analytics, cyber\u00adsecurity protocols and other high-tech functions. International businesses are also jostling for space with top Indian corporations.<\/p>\n
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Attracting and retaining big foreign investors is crucial to Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s plan to transform India into a developed market by 2047, the 100th anniversary of independence from British rule. Modi has announced measures to open up his country\u2019s insurance, pension fund and nuclear sectors to foreign investment, creating further incentives for global banks to boost their presence in Mumbai. At a time when the economy is being buffeted by the surge in oil prices caused by the war in the Middle East, the financial industry may be a bulwark. After a historic bull run beginning in 2020, India\u2019s benchmark NSE Nifty 50 index has returned 19% on average for the past six years, in spite of a choppy 2025 and a new rout following the outbreak of fighting.\u00a0Last year set a record for initial public offerings, which raised a total of $22 billion.<\/p>\n
Chiang Ling Ng, the co-head of real estate investment management at Hines, says the American investment firm has \u201cnever been this busy\u201d in India. It\u2019s helping build a property in BKC, as the Bandra Kurla Complex is known locally. And in Powai, alongside Japan\u2019s Sumitomo Corp., it\u2019s developing 300 luxury lake-facing residences. \u201cIt is the young population, the English-\u00adspeaking environment,\u201d Ng says. \u201cAll these things contribute to corporations\u2019 interests to have staff in India.\u201d<\/p>\n
But even around the shiny towers of BKC, the complexities of Mumbai are on sharp display. For years, older residential neighbourhoods and a few slums in the financial district have been left by the wayside. Mumbai has laws about rehabilitating slum areas that are meant to ensure developers can\u2019t simply appropriate land.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nA sunset in Worli. Image: Abeer Khan\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
To meet its obligations for an office project in BKC, Indian developer Prestige Group has built residential apartments for 740 families who lived in the area. The company expects to hand over new apartment keys within a few months. The beige-coloured building in BKC, with apartments of roughly 500 square feet, features marbled arches, lobbies, and amenities such as air conditioning. These homes will stand next to Prestige\u2019s commercial complex, which will house pricey office and hotel towers.<\/p>\n
The poor neighbourhoods targeted for redevelopment are more than collections of tin-roofed shacks. Over the years, some residents have set up local businesses and factories within their boundaries. Others have upgraded to small brick homes. Moving away from them can mean giving up deep social networks. Still, even a small apartment can offer a more hygienic drainage system and a private toilet, plus safety during the floods that lash Mumbai each monsoon season.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nLanes of an informal settlement in Worli. Photographer: Abeer Khan\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n
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A bit more than a mile from BKC is Dharavi, where more than a million people live on only 600 acres. The area is undergoing a massive redevelopment led by billionaire Gautam Adani\u2019s real estate company, with the Maharashtra state government holding a minority stake. The project will build apartments for residents in the area and elsewhere in the city while also constructing public infrastructure, commercial offices and residential towers for sale on the market.<\/p>\n
Some residents or community boards have sold small plots to other local developers independently. Apartments that have been built there are going for the equivalent of more than $160 000 on the open market. But not everyone is willing to move out. Shaikh Ashab Ali, 29, a tour guide, lives with his parents and extended \u00adfamily \u2013 nine \u00adaltogether \u2013 in a two-story building on 250 square feet of land. His forebears first moved into the area in the 1800s. As a longtime resident of Dharavi, his father has rights to own land and bought the current home eight years ago for 6 million rupees ($64 000).<\/p>\n
The home is now worth at least 9 million rupees. Although the government asked them to move out and promised an equal-sized plot not too far away, the family has refused. \u201cWe were told a new piece of land will be given to us two years after we move,\u201d Shaikh says. \u201cWhere will we stay in the next two years?\u201d Furthermore, it\u2019s not clear whether the family would be able to have a second story, which currently doubles their living space.<\/p>\n
Virmale, the taxi driver, is more upbeat about the coming changes. His neighbourhood, which houses more than 3,000 families, is a holdout in an area that houses some of Mumbai\u2019s wealthiest residents. He lives with his wife in a 100-square-foot hut. Nearby a $1.5 billion eight-lane expressway skirts the Arabian Sea. \u201cWe are in conversation with a developer right now but are yet to sign a contract,\u201d Virmale says. \u201cWe want a 500-square-foot flat for all 3,000 families, and they can use the rest of the land to build apartments and offices for the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
At current prices, a Worli flat that size could be worth 40 million to 50 million rupees. Even a fraction of that could instantly propel Virmale\u2019s family into the coveted crorepati<\/em> status \u2013 having a net worth of 10 million rupees or more. (A crore is 10 million in the Indian number system.) Virmale doesn\u2019t own the land; it belongs to the Mumbai Municipal Corporation. But he has rights to an apartment because he\u2019s paid to lease the land for years. Tenants renting shanties from others would have to move out with no compensation.<\/p>\n Construction in Worli. Image: Abeer Khan\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Upgrading to a new apartment isn\u2019t an impossible dream in Mumbai. Since 1995, the state housing authority has built more than 520,000 apartments, while its slum rehabilitation authority has moved roughly 257,000 families from poor neighbourhoods into flats. Developers who build apartments for residents in slum areas get free land to set up office buildings and residential towers, making it lucrative if they\u2019re able to build luxury towers.<\/p>\n Politicians have largely stayed out of the fray, but activists say long-standing \u00adinequities are worsening. Maharashtra\u2019s slum rehabilitation agency was meant \u201cto create a market subsidy model for housing for poor people,\u201d says Sheela Patel, director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres, a nonprofit that\u2019s done surveys in Dharavi. \u201cNow it has been subverted to take hold of land where poor \u00adpeople live and dump them elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n ADVERTISEMENT:<\/p>\n CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Swimming pool at the Prestige Jasdan Classic tower in Mumbai\u2019s Mahalaxmi area. Image: Abeer Khan\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Worli, Prestige Group, working with its land partner, DB Realty, has recently razed a collection of huts to level the ground for construction on an apartment building complex for 4,041 families who lived on the land before. The complex will have Waldorf Astoria-branded luxury apartments next door, says Irfan Razack, the billionaire running Prestige Estates Projects, the publicly traded real estate company that\u2019s part of the group. Mumbai is all about coexistence, he says.<\/p>\n Prestige\u2019s quarterly sales now match what it used to make annually five years ago. For its high-end office towers at BKC, the company has secured preleases \u2013 a forward contract with tenants for space that will be ready only in 2028, Razack says. \u201cA prelease is a dream deal,\u201d the developer says. It was rare for tenants in Mumbai to make deposit payments years in advance. But as India gets wealthier, rich local families and finance executives are purchasing top apartments.<\/p>\n Pushback from residents and activists has the potential to create delays and leave pockets of land undeveloped, but it seems inevitable that Mumbai\u2019s skyline will be permanently altered. \u201cWe are going to change the landscape of the city,\u201d Razack says.<\/p>\n In Mumbai, Raghavan covers investing and real estate, and Palepu reports on wealth. Chanjaroen covers finance from Singapore.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 2026 Bloomberg<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Mumbais #skyline #soaring #pressure #housing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 41-story Altimus tower in Mumbai offers sweeping views of the Arabian Sea. 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