Purchasing one’s dream home is among the biggest aspirations of a person, once he/she starts working. However, this often proves to be an onerous task. A home buyer often ends up compromising on one or more of comfort, quality, convenience, cost and location, and hence, doesn’t exactly get the home envisioned. One of India’s leading developers, Sobha Limited, is aware of this major gap in the residential real estate market and has sought to address it with its new banner, called as Sobha Dream Series. The first project under this banner is Sobha Dream Acres in the garden city of Bangalore.

Projects under Sobha Dream Series aim to provide home buyers a combination of a good location, quality construction, and top-class amenities to ensure a comfortable life and at a good price point as well. Considering all this, interest in Sobha Dream Acres has been quite high in the city. I recently visited the project site to check for myself whether the hype around this project is justified.

Sobha Dream Acres: Location & Connectivity

Sobha Dream Acres is located in Balagere in East Bangalore, in close proximity to the Varthur Lake. To get here from Whitefield, one needs to get on to the Varthur Main Road and take a right turn from the direction board of the project on to the Balagere Road. The road is rather narrow and has a couple of rough patches, but should improve and be widened in due course, as the project comes up.

The project is primarily targeted at employees of the Information Technology, Engineering and R&D companies, which have their offices nearby. Some of Bangalore’s biggest technology parks such as Embassy Tech Square, Embassy Tech Village and Prestige Tech Park are within 5-6 km from here and can be reached directly through Balagere Road, without needing to travel much on the crowded Sarjapur-Marathahalli Outer Ring Road (ORR), which saves plenty of time daily for residents of this complex. Other major hubs such as ITPL in Whitefield (7.5 km) and Bagmane World Technology Center (11.5 km) are not too far away either, though travel time here could be greater.

While the project offers good connectivity to the Sarjapur ORR, Sarjapur Main Road and Whitefield, the public transportation to the site is not too good at present. One needs to get to the Varthur Main Road (1.5 km) for a bus. The Namma Metro is too far away to be a viable option for residents. The nearest railway station, Bellandur Road, is only 3.5 km away, but the more convenient railheads are Whitefield (9.5 km) and Krishnarajapuram (17 km). The Kempegowda International Airport is 51 km from here.

Sobha Dream Acres: Social Conveniences

Prospective residents of Sobha Dream Acres can benefit from a good selection of social amenities in the neighbourhood of the project. Schools such as Chrysalis High School (3 km), Greenwood High International School (7 km) and The International School Bangalore (TISB, 7.5 km) are within close proximity and the same can be said of higher educational institutions such as New Horizon College of Engineering (5.5 km), Vydehi Institute of Medical Science (8 km) and CMR Institute of Technology (9 km).

Among healthcare options, the most notable ones nearby include Columbia Asia Hospital (4 km), Sakra World Hospital (6.5 km) and Vydehi Hospital (8 km). Shopping and entertainment options too are aplenty in the area. Major malls such as Virginia Mall and Forum Value Mall (both 4 km), Bangalore Central (10 km) and Phoenix Market City (12 km) are close by and so are big shopping centers such as D-Mart (5 km) and Star Extra (7 km).

Sobha Dream Acres: Site Overview

Sobha Dream Acres is one of the larger township projects in Bangalore, occupying a total area of 81 acres, of which 75% will be open space, offering plenty of avenues for residents to exercise, walk/jog, interact with each other and enjoy a clean and pollution-free environment. The entire complex is planned to sport a green cover, with landscaped lawns surrounding the residential areas and vehicular movement restricted to well-defined paths around the periphery of the complex.

This vast project is planned to come up in 5 phases. I could see that construction was at an advanced stage for the Phase 1 buildings, with many apartments already occupied and was in the initial stages for the launched buildings of Phase 2. Construction of buildings is being carried out onsite, using advanced Precast technology, which I shall cover later. Sobha targets to hand over possession of apartments in Phase 2 from the middle of 2018 to the end of 2019 (depending on the building launch date). Phase 3 is due to be handed over by the end of 2020, while Phase 4 could be by 2022. Plans for Phase 5 are still to be finalized, but it is likely to come up where the Precast plant is currently situated.

Sobha Dream Acres: Apartment Overview, Sizes & Prices

Sobha Dream Acres is a large project, offering a whopping 6500 residential apartments of 1 and 2 BHK configuration. These apartments will lie in 29 blocks with 57 wings in all (for Phase 1-4), though the number of wings per block varies and hence, so does the number of apartments per residential level in each block. All blocks will have either 14 or 15 residential levels, built above 2 levels of parking, of which 1 parking space will be allotted to each apartment owner. Phase 5 tentatively is planned to have 3 BHK apartments, but details of the same shall only be finalized in due course.

The 1 BHK apartments in the project occupy a saleable area of ~645 – 661 sq. ft. 2 BHK apartments can be either regular or large, the former being of ~745 – 1012 sq. ft. and the latter of ~937 – 1210 sq. ft. The base price of an apartment here is Rs. 5,250/sq. ft., which comes at a premium owing to the developer’s reputation and brand name. One can get a 1 BHK apartment for a total package of Rs. 39 – 45 lakhs, a 2 BHK regular apartment for Rs. 61.7 lakhs and a 2 BHK large apartment for Rs. 74.5 lakhs, with registration charges to be paid additionally.

Sobha has a reputation for being quality oriented and major adopters of technology and a visit to Sobha Dream Acres reinforces the same. Sobha is a backward integrated developer, which means that all construction materials, tiles and almost all fittings are their own. For an end user, this ensures timeliness of construction owing to low dependency on external suppliers and at the same time, provides assurance of consistency in construction quality. In this project, Sobha has taken its customer focus a step further by adopting the new Precast technology, wherein at an onsite Precast plant, roofs, walls and floors of apartments are fabricated and concrete is then poured into these casts (or moulds). This brings down the construction cost by 10-15% and construction time by nearly two-thirds (the cycle time for a residential level is 3-5 days using Precast, compared to 10-15 days under normal Brick & Mortar construction).

For a home buyer, this means faster possession, better quality, lower maintenance costs and a lower overall apartment cost. Sobha’s attention to detail in construction lends itself to other features: from usage of skirting in walls to the high quality vitrified tile flooring in rooms and sanitary ware & electrical fittings by top brands allowing for longer life and less maintenance headaches for residents.

Sobha Dream Acres: Amenities Overview

In many large townships, it’s often been seen that the amenities provided are often grossly insufficient for the large number of residents and the quality of some of these is not quite up to the mark either. This is not the case in Sobha Dream Acres, however, as the developer has taken care to address these pain points. Each of the 5 phases will have a separate clubhouse and a swimming pool each to prevent overcrowding. In addition, multiple courts will be provided across the complex for outdoor sports such as tennis, basketball and volleyball and so will kids play areas. The vast open spaces and gardens in the complex serve as good places for exercising or social/community celebrations.

Phase 1, as an example, will boast of a 50,000 sq. ft. clubhouse, which will be equipped with numerous amenities for residents’ daily needs and recreation alike. For the former, it will contain an ATM, convenience store, clinic and crèche, while for the latter; options include a music/dance room, library, coffee shop, yoga room and gymnasium. Facilities for indoor sports such as badminton courts, squash courts and table tennis, carom and cue sports (pool & billiards) will also be provided. In addition, guest rooms will be available for residents to keep their visitors. In brief, care has been taken to ensure that almost all needs of residents are addressed without them needing to step out of the complex.

Conclusion

Sobha Dream Acres is a project, which has clearly been planned on a big scale and promises to offer residents the things that matter to them the most: a good location, quality construction, a good clean environment, options for leisure and exercise, and timely delivery. With regulations such as RERA coming in, it’s prudent for a home buyer to associate with only reputable developers and Sobha fall in this category. For someone looking for a value for money home in this location, this project indeed deserves serious consideration.