Housing projects located 300m from the main road are in high demand as they are cut off from the cacophony of the city.
It started out as a marketing move when the price of property on arterial roads shot through the roof. Realtors started selling properties away from the main road using ‘away from the noise’ as the USP. But now, it is becoming a demand. Experts say noise evil in a residential area is a key factor for home buyers.
“About 50% of the buyers now want a plot that is away from the main road,” says Suresh Krishn, president of the Confederation Of Real Estate Developers Association Of India in Chennai. Even hotspots like T Nagar are not spared. ” A residential plot off a busy road definitely has more demand, even in T Nagar. People want to stay away from the main roads,” says Sriram Ganapathy, member, Chennai Architecture Foundation and managing director of KSM Architecture. “Low noise levels is also one of the reasons why Boat Club and Poes Garden are expensive,” he adds.
The biggest demand is for housing projects located 300 metres from the main road.”While you might have better appreciation of property on the main road, you get a better quality of life off it,” says Krishn. In luxury and high-end projects mostly situated on main thoroughfares, noise is cut out using several techniques, such as doubled glazed windows. “They cost twice as much as regular windows but do not add too much to the overall cost of the construction,” says Ganapathy. “However, this means you cannot open the windows, which would force residents to use more air conditioning,” he adds.
E Suresh, marketing manager at city-based Quteplus which manufactures high quality windows says, “We usually get soundproofing requests from people who live near railway stations or main roads. And of course, people in the film and music business.”
The glass they provide has two panes with a gap in between, which can either be filled with air or an inert gas like argon, which has insulating properties. The two sheets of glass and air insulation helps keep the noise out. “It’s is popular in homes and offices in a noisy neighbourhood, but it is more expensive than installing ordinary glass windows,” says Suresh, adding that while glass windows cost around Rs 55 sq ft, the sound-proofed version is priced from Rs 200 to Rs 300 per sq ft.
Architects say soundproofing is a priority for road-facing projects. “If we are developing a house from scratch, we take anti-noise measures at every level,” says Nanda Devi, partner at Chennai-based Invent Architects. Compound walls are built taller, buffer walls are created at the entrance if it is road-facing, and the garden is spread out in front of the house, to act as a sound buffer between the road and the living room.
“Shrubs, bushes and trees are a natural sound barrier,” says V Vivek Kumar, also from the same company, adding that a buffer wall can help keep out both sound and heat. Indoor panelling, he says, costs around Rs 800 per sq ft and a buffer walls costs around Rs 350 sq ft. Other stopgap methods to cut noise, says Devi, are to seal any cavities around windows and doors that let noise in, and double window drapes -a thicker curtain to keep sound out and a sheer one to allow light in.
Karthikeyan Hemalatha & Kamini Mathai, The Times of India, Chennai