Industry experts assert it is difficult to put a time frame on certain requirements like getting over a 100 Government permits from the time of starting construction to completion. Historically, hotel construction in India has been somewhat cumbersome owing to the multiple clearances/approvals required from Central and State Government agencies.
We are all talking about reforms in the Indian real estate. However, while a structural reform is the need of the hour, it is equally important to understand that efforts to regulate the sector by almost all possible players in the ring are actually detrimental for the overall growth of the sector. This also raises the fundamental question as to reforms at what cost and for whose benefit.
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.
Disney Consumer Products India, the licensing & merchandising arm of The Walt Disney Company India, has done its first licensing deal in the real estate sector with Mumbai-based real estate company Sunteck Realty to launch Disney Inspired Homes in Goregaon, the Northern suburb of Mumbai.
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.
Indian real estate companies, which borrowed heavily during the peak of the economic cycle and rosy business forecast, are now caught in the vortex of piling debt post-slowdown. Most of the realtors who went on a land bank acquisition with borrowed money are struggling to repay even the interest and banks look reluctant to restructure the debt any more.
The government has also given more time to as many as 37 Special Economic Zone developers, including Navi Mumbai SEZ, DLF Commercial Developers and Tata Consultancy Services, to execute their projects. Five SEZ developers were allowed to surrender their projects as well. But the mounting criticism is now forcing the government to eject non-serious players from SEZ.
Being blamed for being a haven for black money cartel, realty players broke their silence and instead tried to put the blame on the government for not introducing the desired reforms in the sector. However, they did not spell out if reforms are prerequisite to check the cartel of black money in the sector, why are they opposing the realty bill and a regulator.
The anti-monopoly regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) has dismissed the plea of two individuals against the realty company Unitech alleging that Unitech failed to fulfill its obligation by not handing over the possession on time and therefore violated section 4 of the Competition Act (2002) by abusing its dominant position.
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.