The real estate sector has become one of the most diverse and complicated fields in the market today. From being a simple transaction of a measured piece of land from one owner to the next, real estate now is broadly used for anything and everything associated with land. But for a majority of the interested customers, real estate means flat-apartments. And at the moment, the construction sector has become one of the lynchpins of holding the state's economy together.

Land demand has always been high for a state like Kerala.

“The high population and density as such are not the true reasons for the sky-rocketing price of land and housing in Kerala,” says Haridas S, Executive Officer of CREDAI, Trivandrum “The availability of land per person is very low in Kerala. A good percentage of the total surface area is taken up by the rough, unfriendly terrain of the Western Ghats. The remaining strip of land is sliced through with more than forty rivers and long stretches of backwaters. So, negating out all this, there is very little land available for the huge growth that's   anticipated for the state, and hence the ever increasing price and demand for property in the state.”

Trivandrum is now being seen as the most promising place for the real estate sector after Cochin. Over a hundred apartment flats are being rumoured to spring up in the NH bypass stretch in anticipation of the tremendous growth.

“The entire sector is exploding with growth right now. Housing prices has increased many manifolds during the past decade. The strain of having a house built in the city, combined with the cost involved, would turn the current generation into almost entirely into buying flats. Also the growth in the IT sector is going to bring a lot of professionals from other states and they would want to settle down in the security of an apartment, rather than going for individual homes,” observes SBI Chief Manager Avinash Kumar.

But the prospect of growth in Trivandrum is not as bright as it seems, except for maybe, the IT sector. The expansion phases of Technopark and the upcoming Infosys campus are a few lone bright spots.

Other than the IT sector, Trivandrum hasn't got much to offer to a prospective investor, at least in a realistic sense. Most of Trivandrum’s major developmental projects of, including the Vizhinjam harbour, Monorail and the completion and expansion of NH bypass remain stalled at various stages. The tourism industry isn't sitting pretty either, with revenue inflows largely limited to the beaches and resorts along the Kovalam–Vizhinjam–Poovar coastal belt. No sizeable plans have been charted for improving the tourism prospects of the city, or the district as such.