College student Karan Kanodia believes he has struck gold in the real estate market with his recently launched United Demand, an Internet-based business that brokers housing purchases between home buyers and developers in Gurgaon, India.
Terming stamp duties as a “big obstacle” in ensuring transparent transactions in real estate, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday batted for reducing such levies to check the flow of black money in the sector.
Sadiq Batcha, a longtime friend and associate of A Raja and managing director of a real estate company, Green House Promoters, in which Raja’s wife Parameswari was associated as one of the directors and later resigned, has been found dead.
Buying land can be a time-consuming and expensive affair. Not only can the initial phase of buying it be quite complicated, but the cost involved in maintaining a purchased plot can also be quite high.
Entrepreneur Robert Vadra, married into the country’s most powerful family, has made a quiet and relatively unheralded entry into the real estate business, including a partnership with DLF Ltd, the market leader in the business.
It seems to be a box-office-hit bollywood potboiler where a billioner realtor is interrogated as many as 29 times over a period of four years, gets arrested on charges of money laundering. But in the end manages the investigation and a weak case is what makes him laugh away at the system.
At least four firms, Ansal Properties and Infrastructure Ltd (Ansal API), Emaar MGF Land Ltd, Kumar Urban Development Ltd and Paranjape Schemes Constructions Ltd, have received fresh sanctions from banks, although overall lending to the sector remains subdued.
For the Union Budget 2011-12, rising inflation, tight liquidity, high interest rate, industrial slowdown, delayed reforms and negative market sentiment were some of the key concerns to address.
As real estate prices shoot up and interest rates, the outlook for the sector does not look too bright. In its year-end report, Knight Frank has stated that new home sales in India have fallen by 25 per cent due to soaring prices. With the Reserve Bank of India tightening lending norms to developers and raising interest rates, the property market is likely to plumb new lows in 2011 as buyers disappear.
The RICS, an international, self regulatory professional body relating to real estate, has called for a mechanism for consumer protection and fair practices in real estate transactions. This will also help increase domestic and foreign investments in this sector.