There is currently a shortage of 20 million homes. By 2030, 590 million Indians will live in cities, necessitating a further $2.1 trillion of capital investment in infrastructure. The challenge to house the future population is urban in scope and unprecedented in scale.
What makes Mumbai a global real estate market to bet on? There are many USPs of the city property market to make it a global property market, like luxury landscape of the city; its positioning as a job market; social life of Mumbai; investment in the city; appreciation potential; and insulation against price crash. Mumbai is one of those markets that have also weathered the slowdown challenges without crash; not even New York, London or Dubai have this distinction.
ASSOCHAM has urged the Government, National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India to treat homebuyers in real estate projects at par, if not above banks in the pecking order, by providing a separate carve-out for those stuck in the incomplete construction, and any legal hurdle should be immediately removed, by a Presidential Ordinance, if need be.
The ‘ease of doing business’ is even more challenging when it comes to the business of real estate and construction where there is over regulation beyond RERA in terms of the developers running from one department to the other for mandatory NOCs, clearances & approvals.
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.
CNTC a Beijing headquartered Construction giant has entered into the Indian real estate space. It has inked a strategic joint venture with Bangalore-based Golden Gate Properties. The newly formed entity will be called Golden Gate|CNTC.
Industry is nevertheless clear that such apprehensions are just teething problems. Jaxay Shah, President, CREDAI maintains that even though most states have not been able to implement it immediately and are in the process of doing so, yet both consumers and developers need to look at it optimistically. There will be teething problems initially, but as the regulatory mechanism sets in place, we will see a smoother transition into the new administration.
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.
Moving forward, the moot point is whether the builders would decide to postpone their new launches keeping RERA in mind to avoid mid way issues. Within the built environment of real estate it is increasingly being questioned as to whether penalising builders for delays in the projects is justified given they rely on so many external factors. At one point government is coming up with consumer friendly RERA 2017 on the other hand government does not have any system or mechanism to give time bound permission to real estate sector developer, then how government will be successful in implementing the real estate.
The expectation of an overnight change is because the Act is a result of years of expectations on part of the buyers. The developers, on their part, are also changing their business strategy overnight to play it safe with the new regulatory regime.