Buying flats FMCG style

The fall in the Mumbai real estate is real, even if builders and developers do not want to publicly acknowledge that things are pretty much down in the dumps. Sales have crawled to a stop, registrations are down, construction activity is slowing down and new projects are being deferred. The city’s real estate developers are trying every trick in the book to woo prospective buyers.  One builder has a buy-one-get-one-free offer — if you pick up a flat in Santa Cruz, you get one free in a faraway Mira Road suburb that you could presumably use on the weekend — though why this idea is attractive has not been unexplained. Another builder,  who recently had painted Mumbai with hoardings about his new projects, has come out with another innovative idea. The builder concerned has taken to flooding potential customers with e-mails offering housing loans at 7.9 per cent — provided by the developer.