Living in paradise: The great Goa realty rush

Goa: In August 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Sapna Dickson drove down to Goa with her two cats and three friends. The work-from-anywhere era had begun, and Dickson, an advertising professional, grabbed the first chance to get out of Mumbai, a city she had lived in for two decades. The group leased a four-bedroom bungalow in Parra, a serene village in North Goa district, for a monthly rent of ₹40,000.

Nine months into living the Goan life, Dickson decided to settle down in the tiny state. She quit her job last year and now consults for a Goa-based tech client.

“I am in my 40s. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life living a routine in Mumbai. There is no moral policing in Goa. It’s lively and safe for single women,” said Dickson, who now lives on her own in a rented two-bedroom house in Siolim.

Goa has always been a big draw for domestic and foreign tourists. For some, it’s a party paradise with cheap liquor and a bohemian vibe, and for others, it’s the perfect beach getaway. In the last four years, however, Goa has also become the go-to address for property developers, investors, and home buyers—it became a big part of the ‘second home’ buying and renting rally during the pandemic.

Demand for luxury homes and premium plots, in particular, went through the roof. On property portals such as 99acres.com and Housing.com, it is not unusual to see listings of residential plots for sale at ₹4-5 crore across Goa today. On Magicbricks.com, villas on sale cost ₹3-12 crore in places such as Assagao, Anjuna and Siolim.

“Post covid, Goa has seen frenzied real estate activity leading to high appreciation in prices. The heightened activity also pushed up land prices, and the demand for short-stay rentals made Goa a good option for retail investors seeking superior rental returns,” said Shveta Jain, managing director, residential services, Savills India, a property advisory.

The accelerated demand for both first and second homes in Goa was driven by its attractive rental income and long-term appreciation potential. Rental yields had reached 9 to 10%, as per Savills data, possibly the highest in the country. Rental yield is the annual return that a property generates as rent, expressed as a percentage of its market value.

Between January-June 2024, average capital values for villas in North Goa saw a 28% year-on-year increase due to this growing popularity as a second-home location, the preference for gated villas, and a demographic shift towards younger, lifestyle-focused buyers. Certain popular micro markets such as Anjuna, Arpora, Baga, Calangute, Candolim and Vagator along the North Beach District witnessed higher appreciation. Rents in these places rose 25-30%.

Another major development is the 2023 opening of the Manohar International Airport at Mopa, a village in North Goa’s Pernem taluk. There has been frenetic landbuying in villages near the Goa-Maharashtra border and near the airport, which will open up new locations for real estate, tourism, retail and hotels in the years to come.

Vikas Wadhawan, group chief financial officer, Housing.com and proptiger.com, said the new airport has been a game changer. “With better connectivity, pockets of land around the airport will suddenly open up for investments and development,” he said.

Simply put, Goa is today a property market on steroids. As its landscape changes, the charm and laidback spirit it is loved for is also changing, but not everyone believes it is for the better. Many Goans are unhappy with the fast-paced development, and have cited issues with approvals for land-use changes, as well as violations of green norms, among other concerns.

From Gurugram to Goa

Eyeing the spike in demand, many developers from other states decided to grab a piece of the lucrative action in Goa. Builders from Delhi and Gurugram have been making a beeline for the coastal state, as a large chunk of ‘second home’ buyers is from the National Capital Region (NCR). Their counterparts from Bengaluru and Hyderabad have also been making inroads into the market. Bengaluru’s Prestige Group, for instance, has five new projects planned in Goa.

While driving to the new airport at Mopa, on national highway 66, giant billboards announce: ‘Yugen Infra coming soon’.

Gurugram-based Yugen Infra Pvt Ltd is acquiring around 500 acres of land at Patradevi, on the Goa-Maharashtra border, to build a ₹2,000 crore ‘second home’ township. Most of it is agricultural or orchard land for which the builder needs clearance to convert into commercially developable land. “People from across the globe buy homes there. We are from NCR, where there are big townships. We want to create something big in Goa too. It will be a large gated community, with a golf course, resort, villas, studio apartments. Villa plots will cost ₹1 crore upwards,” said Sheesram Yadav, managing director, Yugen Infra.

Noida-based Bhutani Infra, too, has acquired land in Goa for a project. Delhi’s Veera Developers, which develops villas and apartments, entered Goa in 2012 and is today a prominent name in the state. Gurugram’s Axon Developers, meanwhile, is developing a 600-acre township with Ess Vee Developers at Sasoli, in Maharashtra’s neighbouring Sindhudurg district, close to the new Goa airport.

Local developers unhappy

Until this very visible shift, local developers had dominated the scene in Goa, and high-networth individuals bought land to build personal residences or acquired Portuguese villas and refurbished them. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was also an influx of Russian tourists in Morjim and Arambol in North Goa. Many of them stayed on to set up restaurants or deal in land. It was not uncommon to find signages in the Russian language’s Cyrillic script in many tourist spots in those days.

The current scale of land acquisition is unprecedented, and consequently, land prices have gone through the roof in Goa. For instance, the price of land in Assagao, North Goa, which was around ₹30,000 per sq. metre a few years ago, is ₹1 lakh per sq. metre today.

“This is a kind of commercialization that Goa has never seen before. It has impacted local developers like us because landowners sell to the highest bidder. We can’t compete with large developers,” said Suraj Morajkar, managing director of Goa-based Sun Estates Developers, which started the trend of building luxury villas in the early 2000s. Sun Estates counts prominent personalities, such as cricketer Yuvraj Singh, Telugu movie star Ram Charan, and fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani, as its customers.

Given the surge in prices, local developers have to look for land outside the tourism belt, Morajkar added.

Those who own property, however, are laughing all the way to the bank. Just before the 2020 pandemic, Mumbai resident Aditya Bhatia bought a three-bedroom villa at a gated community called ‘Sol Pilerne’ in Pilerne village. He bought it as a second home. What Bhatia didn’t expect was the way the Goa property market would explode after the pandemic. In the last four years, the price of his villa has almost doubled. So, in 2021, he bought two one-BHK apartments in Candolim, a popular beach destination, to rent them out.

“The rental returns are 11-12% because of the location, and the flats are occupied through the year. Now, I want to invest more in Goa,” said Bhatia, who is into the movie syndication business.

New real estate frontiers

To address the rising demand in Goa, developers are bringing in a mix of products: studio apartments, row houses, retirement homes, luxury villas, and premium plotted projects. The state is the largest market for Mumbai-based Isprava Group, which sells luxury villas with an average ticket size of ₹12-20 crore. It also has villas or estates that cost ₹80-90 crore. The company says it has buyers from Singapore, West Asia, London, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune, among other places.

“Till three years ago, Goa saw mainly holiday home buyers, who would spend 10-20 days a year in Goa. Now, there are people who want to move to Goa—it’s a new cohort,” said Nibhrant Shah, managing director and co-CEO, Isprava Group.

As projects sell well, project sizes are getting larger and more premium. Mumbai’s The House of Abhinandan Lodha (HoAL), which sells premium plots, started with an 18-acre project in Goa. In May, the developer launched its third plotted project, a 130-acre development in Bicholim taluk called ‘One Goa’. HoAL sold around 600 plots in two phases, with the ₹74.99 lakh price for a 1,500 sq. ft plot being revised to ₹84.99 lakh in June-July, thanks to heavy demand.

“NRI participation is high in Goa and they typically buy in groups. Unlike a new market like Ayodhya, where people bought plots for long-term capital appreciation and sentimental value, people are buying in Goa for immediate consumption,” said chairman Abhinandan Lodha.

It’s not just residential. In Patto Village, a busy commercial area in Panaji, the state capital, hectic construction is on at a project site where DLF Ltd is building a 770,000 sq. ft mall ‘DLF Promenade’, set to open in 2025.

“A lot of people have moved to Goa, and as a result you have urban communities from Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai. There are also local Goans. The time to build a good mall in Goa is now,” said Pushpa Bector, senior executive director and business head–DLF Retail. It will be a fashion-centric mall with many premium, international brands.”

But every property market has a growth limit. Anticipating continued demand, developers have been on a launch spree, which property consultants believe could lead to oversupply in some pockets.

Rising protests by locals

Flora Cardoso lives in a quaint Portuguese-style cottage in North Goa’s Saipem village. A hand painted ceramic nameplate in blue and white, a unique form of Portuguese art called Azulejos, reads: ‘Cottage J.P. Cardoso 1922’. Most Goan houses, churches, and even hotels have these decorative nameplates. Now, with many of these centuries-old houses getting pulled down to build swanky villas or upscale apartments, these signages are also getting lost.

Cardoso, who is in her 80s, lives with her husband and son in a locality that she says is fast changing. She pointed at a villa project under construction next door. “This used to be a quiet neighbourhood. Now, there are local politicians and a lot of vehicles. We are Goans, so I will never sell this” she asserted.

The frenzied real estate activity in the state has sparked a flurry of protests by locals. Many Goans fault what they say is blatant conversion of agricultural land, cutting of hills and misuse of power to accommodate the real estate lobby.

Between April 2023 and August 2024, roughly 2.5 million square metres of land has been converted, mostly for real estate projects, according to data compiled by Solano Da Silva, assistant professor, BITS Pilani-Goa campus, and author of the book The Great Goa Land Grab.

“Goa, being a small state, needs to judiciously manage its land. But two major land amendments in the Town and Country Planning Act (made in the last 12 months) have allowed for spot zoning changes, leading to massive conversion for commercial development. It is worrying,” Da Silva said.

Zoning or regulations that determine its usage (land can be demarcated as settlement, agricultural, orchard and so on) is governed by the state’s town and country planning department, which was created in the 1970s.

In his village panchayat, Pilerne-Marra, Da Silva said 10 parcels of land measuring 92,000 sq. metres have been converted in the last 12 months. On 17 September, the Pilerne Citizens Forum filed a petition in the High Court of Bombay at Goa, challenging two key land amendments, alleging that the village is being destroyed in a piecemeal manner at the behest of certain real estate firms.

The widespread opposition within Goa has had an effect. “Unlike Mumbai or Bengaluru, project launches happen quietly in Goa, without much publicity. Locals are getting more sensitive due to the demolition of old houses and construction activity everywhere,” said a property consultant who didn’t want to be identified.

DLF, for instance, is soft marketing its ultra-luxury project in Reis Magos, North Goa, which will have just 62 villas. Each villa in the project, which it plans to launch this month, will be priced between ₹45-55 crore. “DLF has acquired various land parcels across the state over the years. The company will strategically monetize these assets at the appropriate time,” said a company spokesperson.

Earlier this month, Goa’s town and country planning minister, Vishwajit Rane, announced that the permissions granted to DLF for the villa project and to Bhutani Infra’s project in Sancoale, South Goa, would be reviewed. This was after local residents alleged there had been violations, including hill cutting, with many taking to social media to post videos.

“Every land has its own character. Now, because of huge demand, if we change the land use policy and start providing exemptions on a case-to-case basis, then it’s a problem. If one is hacking a hill or building swimming pools for each villa or on every floor, it destroys all the planning and policies that Goa has stuck to for all these years,” said Da Silva.

A small but vocal section of the local populace, which tends to blame ‘outsiders’ for many of Goa’s ills, is also irate over the influx of people. “Goa has been changing over the years, but it’s changed too fast in the last few years. Just look at the number of vegetarian restaurants here. It’s easier to find pav bhaji today than Goan fish curry or chicken xacuti,” lamented Martin Fernandes, a server at a restaurant on the touristy Baga beach.

Others dismiss the xenophobia, pointing out that Goans themselves have settled across India and all over the world and cannot therefore have a different yardstick for their homeland.

Commander Arun Patil, who hails from Pune, is a long-time resident of Goa. He finally bought his dream home, a one-bedroom apartment in Ikigai, a senior living project launched by Prescon and Manasum Senior Living in Tiswadi taluk, for ₹70 lakh. “People have the right to move here,” asserted Patil, who is the principal of the National Institute of Watersports. “I have lived here for two decades. If you look at it that way, even I am an outsider.”

And so is Sapna Dickson. But, she, too, wants to put down roots in Goa, and buy a piece of land to build her own home. On that count, she and her cats will be spoiled for choice—but not for price.