Rose Valley Real Estate and Construction Limited has filed a writ petition in the Calcutta high court, challenging the order of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for virtually stopping its business. The case will come up for hearing in the court of Justice Jayanta Biswas on Thursday.
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) has suggested the government to introduce Real Estate Investment Trust and Real Estate Mutual Fund to enable investors to own a diversified portfolio of professionally managed assets in the real estate sector. In a note submitted to the government, the Chamber said that the Indian Real estate sector currently lacks any monetization vehicle for capital intensive verticals such as commercial offices and retail malls.
Pune is virtually unrecognizable from the sleepy, laid-back city it was a few decades ago. There were no signs of any significant real estate action in the erstwhile Punyanagari before that. Today, however, Pune numbers in the Top Seven property hotspots within the country.
8 out of every ten home buyers in the Indian cities are sulking with the unfair trade practices of the real estate developers. Only 20 per cent of the buyers said they received a defect-free home and timely possession. The low customer satisfaction index was as much evident with developers offering affordable housing as with luxury housing.
Concerned over excessive flow of banking funds to the real estate sector, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said lenders will provide loans only up to 80 per cent of the cost of property. Following the RBI directive, a home buyer will necessarily have to arrange at least 20 per cent of the property value on his own before seeking loan from a bank.
Considering the amount of negative press they get, it is not immediately apparent that there are also less negative ways of looking at them. For instance, slums represent an extremely high-density model of residential settlement. In this respect, they make the most efficient use of limited land possible.
While the foreign direct investment flows (FDI) dependent Indian realty market is awaiting a good fortune, a World Bank report brings cheer to the industry. It says the FDI into developing countries including India is expected to recover over the next couple of years and is projected to increase by 17 per cent in 2010.
The Mumbai realty market is awaiting a policy change by the Maharashtra Government that could appreciate the prices in South Mumbai, while soften up the market in the suburbs. Real estate prices in South Mumbai range between Rs 20,000 and Rs 1 lakh per sq ft, whereas the rates in the suburbs range between Rs 6,000 and Rs 40,000 per sq ft.
In the wake of Adarsh society controversy the Mumbai government has suddenly woken up to the reality that they don’t have authentic records of land ownership and maps of many plots in one of the costliest addresses in India, South Mumbai. The state’s urban development department has written to the city collector, telling him to prepare records of ownership of land in Backbay and Nariman Point areas in south Mumbai.
Capital market regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has apprehensions over the feasibility of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in India. The regulator had issued draft guidelines for REITs a couple of years ago, but may drop its plan to introduce it now.