BeauMonde Towers, Prabhadevi. That is Deepika Padukone’s new address. The actress has bought a plush four-bedroom apartment in a 33-storey tower for a whopping Rs16 crore along with her father Prakash, a former national badminton champion.
The actress’s apartment in tower B has an area of 2,776 sq ft and is very close to the Siddhivinayak temple. Deepika’s 26th floor apartment also comes with parking slots for three cars.
The actress and her father visited the property registration office at the Old Custom House in Fort on December 6 to pay stamp duty for their apartment in BeauMonde Towers, a complex with three residential skyscrapers. They paid Rs79,82,600 to register the property.
“The Padukones did not ask for special treatment. They completed the paper work in just about the same time as anybody else. However, people who were in office when the actress arrived were disappointed since they could not take her pictures,” an official from the registration office told DNA.
The property has been jointly registered in the name of Deepika and Prakash. The apartment was purchased from Sheth Developers Pvt Ltd, which constructed the property in Prabhadevi. BeauMonde Towers has a two-level podium. The complex also has two tennis, badminton and squash courts apart from open exercise decks.
“Deepika, who lives with her parents in Pali Hill at present, may continue to stay there. She may have bought the Prabhadevi apartment as an investment,” a film industry source said.
Deepika’s decision to buy an apartment in Prabhadevi has taken the film industry watchers by surprise. Most stars prefer to stay in the suburbs, especially between Bandra and Andheri, since most of the studios and offices of production houses are there.
However, sources close to Deepika say the actress is not worried about the travel to the suburbs since she feels the Bandra-Worli Sea Link would make her commute easier. Besides, most of the films nowadays are shot overseas. As a result, industry sources say, upcoming high-end properties in South and Central Mumbai have caught Bollywood’s fancy recently.
“Stars who don’t have family-owned homes in the city are warming up to the idea of buying houses in upcoming real estate hubs such as Prabhadevi, Worli and Parel,” a publicist of a top Bollywood actress explained. The secretary of another actress said that those from small-town India find the prospect of owning a high-end luxury home in the island city very alluring. “Some are keen to buy apartments only as an investment option. They don’t have the desire to stay in them,” he added.
A real estate agent from Fort said he had received several inquiries about properties in Worli and Malabar Hill from representatives of two top Bollywood actresses. “Things have yet to materialise, but the interest is there for sure,” he said.
