In the year 2007 Preeti Banerjee bought a house in Royal Legacy, Vasundhara, Ghaziabad with the obvious high expectations of moving into a hassle free living. However, the dreams were soon shattered and she was exposed to the agony of an average middle class home buyer, often left alone at the mercy of the builders.
With the economy giving indications of recovery and real estate companies putting up a brave face, the question as to whether this is the right time to buy property has yet again been raking up. If the industry figure is to be believed, it seems many of the prospective home buyers who had put their plans on shelf due to the threat of job loss & inability to pay the EMIS borne out of recession are back in the property hunt.
With the reasonable expectation of a roof over the head not very long ago, the real estate boom in the last decade has scaled up the liberty of choice for the average home buyers. While the aspirations of even the middle and lower middle income with moderate budgets have gone up, there are very many residential projects launched in recent times that seem to fill the gap with the promise of faster deliveries, hi-tech amenities, luxurious lifestyle, lush green surroundings within the affordable range of 20-40 lakhs.
Kolkata is fundamentally a Tier II city, and its real estate market is not as volatile as those of the primary cities. Because of this, Kolkata’s residential property sector was not as seriously impacted by the nationwide slump in the real estate market as cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Pune or Hyderabad.
India has 105 operational (21,214 hectares) and another 631 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) under various stages of approval (see DTZ report on ‘SEZs in India’ June 2010). These zones are the only tax havens in India after the likely expiry of STPI/EOU scheme in March 2011 and have seen healthy interest from occupiers as well as developers. The new Direct Taxes Code (DTC 2010) bill, proposes to alter the tax framework of SEZs.
Real estate markets are inherently vulnerable to prolonged periods where prices deviate from their fundamental value. The features that contribute to this deviation are imperfect information, suboptimal financial markets and supply rigidities. Imperfect information causes buyers to either overestimate or underestimate the fundamental value of real estate assets.
Building byelaws and regulations differ from states to state and even city to city. However, it invariably turns out that property buyers are required to pay for construction that falls in FSI-free areas – areas of congregation, passage and general convenience.