Quality has suddenly become the buzzword in the realty sector to tide over the unprecedented crisis meet with the uncertain times ahead. Builders are now hiring quality surveyors, construction project manager, energy efficiency specialists and others who can get them quick buyers.
The Bangalore-based publicly-held Sobha Developers has said its sales realisation has gone up 26 per cent on a year-on-year basis while the sales volumes have gone up 25 per cent. On a sequential basis, the realisation is up 7 per cent while the sales being marginally down.
The unprecedented restructuring of project portfolio, selling of land bank, exiting non-core business and the job cuts have yet not led the Indian real estate into the desired comfort zone. The realization to shed the flab has on the contrary left some of the developers to outsource the project execution and pay more.
During the boom, many developers dreamed of transforming the urban landscape with millions of square feet of homes, offices and malls and set off on an aggressive expansion financed with debt that at 6 percent interest was cheap by Indian standards.
Realty sector may appear to be bullish and project that downside is over with rosy forecast ahead, yet the decline in fortune is far from being over. As a matter of fact, the learning in the last four years has made most of the leading players to restructure their project portfolio and shed the flab.
The Nashik consumer court has ordered Dattatraya Kokate, Kishor Chopde and Arun Kapde of Bhagwati Constructions to prepare deeds of apartments in favour of five customers who had filed independent complaints in the court against the developer. Every customer also has to be given Rs 15,000 as compensation for mental harassment and Rs 1,000 to compensate for the court procedures.
In the wake of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) imposing a hefty penalty of Rs. 630 crore on DLF, the anti-monopoly regulator has been flooded with a host of real estate related consumer complaints which may not be in the ambit of CCI. CCI should draw a line that bifurcates between what falls in its domain and what is in the consumer protection ambit. However, in the absence of scientific economic analysis of the relevant market, both in product category and geographic category, the two legs of the relevant market, the sector is keeping its fingers crossed as there has been a clear anomaly in defining the relevant market by the CCI.
Anticipating a significant rate cut by the RBI, disappointed real estate community has ring alarm bells and forecast more slump due to the high interest rate regime. Pointing out that the capital and labour intensive sector plays a key role in employment generation and accelerating growth, industry body CREDAI says the government has also been losers of revenue due to neglect of the sector and risks attributed to real estate and the RBI advisories against lending to real estate have only harmed the sector and made housing costlier for consumers, apart from affecting the economy.
Terming the current building rules as cumbersome, realty developers of Assam have called for simplification and rationalisation of norms and reduction in duties. “The real estate players are in a bind over high spiralling taxes and registration duties which are the highest in Guwahati,” Assam Real Estate and Infrastructure Developers Association President P K Sharma told reporters in Guwahati.
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.