Sorento had a delivery date of October 2017 but received its OC in April 2017. As the project has received the OC, customers buying a ready-to-move-in property from them will not have to pay service tax and VAT (or GST, as and when applicable) which amounts to a saving of a minimum of 5.5% on the base cost.
Many of the homebuyers in their desperate instinct are thinking of immediately stopping EMIs (Equated Monthly Installments) to banks. However, many of them are conscious of the fact that stopping EMI is not a solution. If buyers stop servicing their home loans (as they are not sure if they will get a house), it may impact their credit rating.
Be it Mumbai or Pune in the Western part of India or Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai in the South, the homebuyers seem to be convinced with the reality of GST and its implications with various stages of construction. It is hence not surprising that most of the homebuyers across the cities today wish to invest in ready to move apartments to save from the hassles of paying the GST.
Ready to move apartments are even bringing the fence sitting buyers back to the market now. With many ready to move and near completion projects available in the Mumbai market, the prospective homebuyers are now coming forward for the standing inventory with more confidence.
The buyers can also check whether the developer has put in place systems that manage household waste and construction waste, reuse of salvaged material and recycling. For example, some of the developers are using garbage chute that collects the food waste of residents and transfers it to the compost machines to make compost for the green area maintenance. These are the features that really make a project environment friendly and the buyer can ask for these details in writing.
Considering the overall economic health of an economy is largely influenced by the functioning of its housing market, there is definitely a need to reform the property buying and selling process which allows consumers to be more involved. This is all the more relevant in the present market conditions where, the cost of capital and loans are high and not expected to decrease in the near future – affecting the affordability and availability of homes.
The penetration of basic personal packages of insurance like health or home is dismally low. Health Insurance is less than 10 per cent of the people who can afford it. Home insurance is still less at hardly 1 per cent. So, there is scope for personal lines of insurance especially the retail lines of business to grow exponentially.
In residential space, the speculators can go to North India and invest in a pre-launch and make money in one year or two years. For mid to long-term investors the commercial spaces and retail work much better. But if one is looking at the real long term then one should better invest in land; nothing else can give as much returns as the land.
Bhiwadi, as a matter of fact, has been the first town to conceptualise what is the most need-based housing in India. Facts speak for themselves. There are 98 million people over 55 with a steady growth of 3.5 per cent per annum. In terms of market numbers, in an analysis of 135 urban cities with a total population of 223 million and 52 million households, as many as 12.8 million families have senior citizens.
Most of the homebuyers as well as the other stakeholders of India’s housing market share the sentiments of this homebuyers. The Reserve Bank of India has indeed surprised many while keeping the repo rate unchanged at 6.25 per cent at the beginning of the new fiscal year. Even a symbolic rate cut would have helped the market change its outlook towards the economy.