Track2Realty Roundtable 
Panelists—Dr Anil Sharma, CMD, Amrapali Group
Sunil Dahiya—Sr Vice President, NAREDCO & MD Vigneshwara Developers
Harmit Chawla—MD, HCorp Realty
PK Tripathi—President, Unitech
Moderator—Ravi Sinha, CEO & Managing Editor, Track2Realty
Ravi Sinha: Would any of you agree that the pipeline visibility and land bank suddenly has turned out to be a land liability?
PK Tripathi: To some extent yes, because people who have invested too much money in the land are unable to monetise it.
Harmit Chawla: I absolutely agree, the point is that some developers who are sitting on 2500 acres of land out of which they have allotted only 500 acres. Out of this around 1800 acres is under litigation, but you are stuck. You can not monetise, you can not get a PE fund, you can not do anything.
Sunil Dahiya: It took us 10 years to realise the reforms in banking, insurance etc. Those reforms of 91 were the first layer of prosperity in real estate. By the year 2000, everybody was looking at real estate as an industry, so it took us 10 years to realise that this is the prosperity made by those reforms. By 2012, we are getting a lot of brands in FDI and retail.
The next round of reforms will benefit the manufacturing sector. It will benefit everything from the manufacturing to the banking segment also and forward integration. In 2013, we should all align ourselves with this. When that job creation happens, there will be a lot of housing which has to be created and a lot of office demand and manufacturing demand.
So, we are an industry which should start thinking very loudly. We should not be unintelligent that it should take us 10 years of consensus to realise that there is no such thing as affordable housing.
Ravi Sinha: To wrap up the whole discussion in terms of looking ahead, when we look at the real estate, we see that the residential market is down, IT slowdown has affected the office space demand and retail is also down. Though there is a critical linkage between all the asset component, which are segment that will actually be catalyst to reviving the market, if at all you think that market is going to be revived.
Anil Sharma: See ultimately, the housing is the only vertical in real estate that acts as a catalyst for other verticals to grow.
Ravi Sinha: Do you see housing getting revived in the year ahead?
Harmit Chawla: It has been said in the last 15 years that commercial activity will sell the homes which is nonsense. Commercial has its own validity and I have a very clear focus on residential. Though I don’t agree with you guys that it is going to revive, this is a tough time.
…to be continued
