Track2Realty: Considering the increasing scarcity of available land in our cities, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discuss affordable housing creation without also considering slums and their redevelopment. In latter-day India, almost every city has its slums.
Track2Realty: The City and Industrial development Corporation (CIDCO) of Maharashtra has embarked on a Rs 20,000 crore infrastructure development for the nodes managed by it in Navi Mumbai and indicated that the first phase of the new international airport will be ready by December 2018.
Track2Realty Exclusive: With a vision to make India a housing surplus nation from being the housing shortage country, CREDAI has been campaigning to make the business environment congenial for growth. But the realty bill, in its current form and shape, stifles the honest developer and scares away new entrepreneurs from entering the sector.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Has populism been behind the Maharashtra Government notification on affordable housing is the question that everyone within the built environment of real estate is today asking. There is a general feeling among the developers that the Maharashtra Government notification for the builders developing a housing project on a 4,000 sq m (acre) plot to reserve 20 per cent of the area for affordable housing is not in sync with the market reality.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Come budget and the real estate in the last few years seems to have been repeating the rhetoric of industry status. As a result, year after year it has been a case of realty proposes and the Finance Minister disposes. However, the sector on the eve of 2013-14 makes a strategic shift to be more realistic with its causes and concerns.
CREDAI has reacted sharply over the Finance Minister’s asking chiefs of public sector banks to put pressure on real estate developers to lower property prices and not hold invetory. CREDAI has said in a release that instead of asking realtors to download unsold stock at discounted prices, the Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram should take immediate steps to boost to housing stock supply through special incentives to the affordable segment.
Spiraling property prices and slump in home sales have forced the Union Housing Ministry to think out-of-the-box solutions. After the decision to set up a high-level committee to recommend policy interventions to facilitate creation of rental housing stocks, the ministry has now sought views from private developers and builders to evolve a strategy for reducing the time taken in approval of real estate projects that can help bring down the cost of houses.
Sahara India today announced it would develop a new city near Dhaka called Notun Dhaka and has signed agreement with the Bangladesh government to invest in housing sector of neighbouring nation.
China’s central government wants to weaken the industry’s vice-like grip on the political system as a means to avoid a Jasmine-type revolt.
The RICS, an international, self regulatory professional body relating to real estate, has called for a mechanism for consumer protection and fair practices in real estate transactions. This will also help increase domestic and foreign investments in this sector.