A White Paper on black money tabled in Parliament on Monday, May 21, has named real estate among others as most vulnerable to menace of black money. Given that land is part of the top black money generators, the white paper suggested that states could consider taxing farm income to curb black money.
There is a clear disconnect between what home buyers want and what they get. And it is here that the home buyers are ready to pay more to get what they see to believe. While the frequency of launching new residential projects have declined in the last year or so, there is also sizeable inventory building up that is available for buyers who are willing to make that investment.
While buying a house majority of the Indians have now matured to pay for ready-to-move property than a castle in the air. No wonder, despite the high appreciation potential, the new launched projects have few takers and there is hardly any market for a pre-launch offer. Thanks to the poor delivery of the real estate developers, unmet commitments and execution risk involved, at least the end users are not interested in new launches anymore.
Experts in the urban policy and planning are of the view that since none of the traditional solutions have worked, it calls for fresh approach and out-of-the-box thinking to make India slum free. Pranay Vakil, Chairman of Knight Frank India outrightly blames the ambiguous policies coming in the way of slum redevelopment. He says there is no dearth of expression of interest and even some of the international players had recently tied-up with the Indian partners for the same. He urges the Government for consistency in policy guidelines if slum free cities have to be a realty reality.
If you look the FDI side of the story over the years, initially there was an influx of a lot of foreign funds and in 2007, it was driven by the US. But the 3-4 years that investors have been here, we have seen a lot of selling. So a lot of investors withdrew or reduced their portfolio and even though being a fund, we found ourselves putting our hands into the acquisitions, marketing etc. It was not our comfort zone and we have been playing the role of a developer instead.
Despite the market slowdown and high competitiveness among the ‘Big Boys’ in the Indian residential real estate business, smaller builders of residential projects can still corner a healthy market share. It is all a matter of knowing which league to play in, and how to play.
While buying a house majority of the Indians have now matured to pay for ready-to-move property than a castle in the air. No wonder, despite the high appreciation potential, the new launched projects have few takers and there is hardly any market for a pre-launch offer. Thanks to the poor delivery of the real estate developers, unmet commitments and execution risk involved, at least the end users are not interested in new launches anymore.
When the Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee proposed home buyers to withhold 1% of the sale consideration as Tax Deducted at Source (TDS), it became a free-for-all kind of football match with developers and property consultants alleging that it could encourage black money component in real estate, while tax consultants believed otherwise and pointed out that the reach of the banking sector in rural area makes it easier to detect unsavoury deals.
Cognizant Technology Solutions has increased its real estate infrastructure expansion in India by nearly $200 million.
The US-based company, which has large offshore presence in India, has revised its investment plan to a total of $700 million in real estate from 2011 through 2015.
In its first ever Indian investment, the Plaza Centers Group has appointed Pioneer Property Zone (PPZ),- leading experts in developing and managing shopping malls –for their upcoming mall in India – Property Zone will be managing the mall for the group which will include financial management & implementing strategies for growing the asset performance. The upcoming property is at Koregaon Park Plaza Mall in Pune.