The New Investment Buzzword
That Will Hit Goa
Villament has already become a buzzword in Bangalore’s real
estate lexicon (Anshul Dhamija, TOI: 2011). It is a concept that is gaining
popularity, writes Dhamija, with those who want the luxury of a villa and yet
crave the comfort and convenience an apartment affords. A villament is a large
duplex apartment, usually with a double-height living room, large balconies and,
most importantly, a terrace with a garden which gives the feeling that one is
on the ground despite living in a high-rise building. Although the Goan real
estate market is still rife with villas and apartments as separate building
types, one can wager that the arrival of villaments is not too far off.
But before we focus
on the impending arrival of villament-type developments in Goa, let us reflect
on the current popular building type in the real-estate market, the
vacation-house. In his seminal essay ‘A time for space and a space for time:
the social production of the vacation house’ (Society and Architecture: 1980), sociologist-historian Anthony King broadly
defines the vacation-house as the occasional residence of a household that
usually lives elsewhere and which is primarily used for recreational purposes.
He argues that the capitalist economy produces not only a surplus of wealth,
but also, for a sizeable minority, a surplus of time. King claims that the motives of owning
vacation homes include seeking compensation for city living, understood as
escaping from perceived overcrowding, noise, traffic congestion, air pollution,
and the pressures of city life (p.194). No wonder then that the elites of the
large metropolises like Bombay and Delhi seek to own a vacation home in Goa, as
it is perceived as a perfect holiday destination with its sun, sea, and sand, apart
from the Europeanised atmosphere that they don’t find anywhere else in India.
However, the vacation
house is not simply a house; its very architecture differs from a full-time
residence. King argues that the
ideological preference for ‘nature’ results in a preference for country or
semi-wilderness locations, preferably with extensive views. He says that these purpose-built houses have features which
integrate the ‘indoors’ and ‘out of doors’ and at its most extreme, whole walls
and roofs are cast as windows, giving extensive vistas of vegetation, or views
of distant fields and beaches. King further elaborates that in densely settled
vacation areas, the vacation homes are of courtyard plan, where their occupants
turn their backs on the outside world to gaze at the enclosed vegetation of the
court within. The vacation-houses also use artificially produced ‘natural’
materials like the rough-cut timber, cane, grass matting, hand-woven fabrics;
again these are attributes, King claims, of an ideology that is anti-urban,
anti-industrial, and desirous of a ‘simple life’. The strongest criticism that King
confers on this type of lifestyle is that “[o]nly for the materially satiated did
the ‘simple life’ have an appeal; the ‘Great Outdoors’ was attractive only if
one had comfort within” (p.213).
During the 1990s, large vacation houses in Goa were generally
the affairs of the super-rich, like the Mallyas, who owned sprawling properties
on ‘virgin’ sites overlooking the sea. Now, the situation has changed as a large
number of the rising urban upper class, from Indian metros, are buying second
homes in Goa. The surplus wealth created in metros gives these urban elites an advantage
to invest in a comparatively cheaper real-estate market of Goa. The investment though is not limited to buying
vacant land and villas, as many are also buying apartments to fulfil their need
to have a second home in this Europeanised holiday destination. But it stands
to reason that these investors will not be happy with simply buying any
apartments. They would want their apartments to have the feel and features of
vacation-houses. And this is where the concept of villaments with catch up, as
it promises the luxury and feel of a villa yet is relatively affordable due to the
stacking of many units on one piece of land. With the villament-type developments, the
holiday homes in Goa are all set to go high-rise.
Increasingly, Goa as a tourist destination is not just in
demand to be consumed for its ‘sights’, but worryingly, through ‘sites’, by the process of ownership,
of this land and properties, by tourists (Trichur: 2013). So, “What can we
understand about a society by examining its buildings and physical environment?”
(King: 1980). To say the least, the current real-estate developments in Goa
reflect the aspirations of urban Indian society much more than the local needs
of average Goans. While popular belief directs attention against the nibbling away
of land by the poor migrants, one should be aware that the large, elite,
property sharks from the Indian metros, ably aided by the local real estate
industry, are taking bigger bites of this scarce land, and that too as a
second, or a third, helping, in their insatiable lust for property ownership
and leisure.
(This article was first published on 13th September 2015 in The Goan Everyday)
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