Kerala property watch: What is Thiruvananthapuram's PPM?

Thiruvananthapuram district, the southernmost district of Kerala is also home to Kerala’s capital city.

Thiruvananthapuram has something for everyone - nature lovers will enjoy the forests, beaches, rivers and mountains spread across the district and history buffs will enjoy the numerous palaces and ancient temples located here.

Despite being the capital there is a certain calm and peace that is enjoyed by the residents of Thiruvananthapuram.

Let us try to break down the real estate scene in this district.

We begin with identifying the median price per square feet for villas in a representative set of regions in Thiruvananthapuram.

We can see that Ambalamukku has the highest price per square feet at ₹5300/sqft.

Ambalamukku is close to the city center and is home to Kamukara school of music, Sree Krishna Swamy temple and St. George Orthodox church all of which are important landmarks.

Let us now see how far each area is from other areas in Thiruvananthapuram.

The heat map above shows the travel time from one location to another location within Thiruvananthapuram in peak hour traffic.

If you want the distance from Ambalamukku to Karamana you can look up Ambalamukku follow that row till the Karamana column and you will see that it takes 24 minutes to drive from Ambalamukku to Karamana.

Now that we know the median price per square feet and the driving time between these locations let us take a look at the PPM or percentage per minute.

PPM is a metric we introduced in our last article: Kerala Property Watch: Where to buy villa in Ernakulam

Let us go through that once again here.

The cost of a home is mostly dependent on where it is located.

Typically an area where a large population works will have the highest price per square foot because of people’s desire to have a short commute to work.

There are times when a location is expensive because of all the amenities it provides.

Whatever the case as your drive times to these desirable locations increases the cost of real estate reduces. Essentially for every minute you drive to work, your child’s school or a mall you are earning a discount on the price for your home.

We try to capture this discount using the metric PPM. PPM is defined as the percentage discount you get per minute of drive time.

Below is the PPM heat map for Thiruvananthapuram.

Green spots show the most value for money with respect to the destination location of the column, while red is the worst. Greenish yellow is somewhere in between. We can see that Peroorkada has the best PPM if Ambalamukku is your desired location. Identify the columns with your desirable location and the greenest box is the location with the most value for money.

Of course as I had mentioned previously numbers is only a part your real estate journey. Use these numbers to filter out some locations. Once you have your short list go there and spend some time there. Take a walk in the neighborhoods you are considering, eat at a restaurant there, really picture yourself living there and then make your decision.

This article was written by Bobby Ninan and Vinay Thomas who are directors of a Kerala based real estate website.

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