There has been a lot of reports about rentals and residential property prices cooling off significantly on a pan-India basis. Many housing loans as well have cooled off by about 10-15%.

Pradeep Jain, Chairman of Parsvnath Developers, doesn't think prices have been cooling off in north India, though. He said, "I completely disagree that the prices have fallen around 20% in north India. There is no fall in the prices as such except in the few areas like in the extension part of the Gurgaon."

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with  Pradeep Jain:

Q: We understand that prices have fallen by about 10-20% if not more, in the northern region. Can you quantify that from a residential and a commercial perspective?

A: I completely disagree with you that the prices have fallen around 20% in north India. There is no fall in the prices as such except in the few areas like in the extension part of the Gurgaon, the new master plan where there is no infrastructure. The people will start to market some project in that deep area and with the hype of earlier real estate, the developers started to sell around Rs 3,500-3,400/sq ft then come down to about Rs 2,200-2,500/sq ft.

In my eyes, the right price of the location is not more than Rs 2,000/sq ft because those areas are around 30-40 kilometers away from the existing development of Gurgaon. If you look at Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Sonepat and Delhi there is no fall in the prices of residential and commercial.

If you talk about commercial exclusively, the prices increased about 15-20% in last six-months time particularly in Kanot. Rentals are more than Rs 400/sq ft. In Gurgaon the rentals are about more than Rs 100/sq ft, same as Noida and the Ghaziabad. In Delhi shopping malls space is not available and demand is too high.

Q: What about retail rentals? Have those seen a significant cooling off?

A: In north India, particularly the NCR, there are very few shopping malls, but in Delhi metros there is no space available with us, and the retailers are offering high rentals. Earlier we used to lease out to the anchor tenant about Rs 60-70/sq ft. Now we are leasing out to about Rs 120-150/sq ft to the anchor tenant, and to the vanilla tenant we are leasing out about Rs 150-200/sq ft. There is no slowdown in that way if the prices not cooling down.

Q: Like you said far-flung parts of Gurgaon had seen the same pact, do you see that coming into the central business district? In calendar year 2007 we saw rentals grow at a cliff of about 40-50%, what do you expect for this year?

A: The Delhi master plan is underway, the government is yet to notify and implement the scheme on how it is going forward to involve the real estate developer for about 18,000 odd acre of the land coming out in Delhi. But there is no clarity at this point of time; this year is the election year, I don’t know before the election the things comes out or not. As of now there is big shortage in Delhi and the prices in the residential colonies reached to the height of say about Rs 8-9 lakh a square metre.

Q: One final word - roughly how much the Gurgaon extension price cooling off, about 10 odd percent or more or less in that?

A: As I said, the correct price of that area between Rs 2,200-2,500/sq ft and that earlier people were selling to the investor community at about Rs 3500/sq ft.