Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) India has announced the launch of ‘Millionaire Homes 2011’, after the successful series of Millionaire Homes 2009 and 2010 held in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. The event is designed as a platform for connoisseurs of lifestyle and fine living, to experience some of the finest concepts in luxury homes in India.
The RBI and market regulator SEBI have enhanced their vigil on funds coming from Mauritius, suspecting round-tripping or routing of illicit money back through the island nation.
Real estate developers have called for focussed support in the Budget for the first-time home buyer and measures to augment supply of housing for affordable and low income groups. Industry representatives have also called for a simplification of systems and tax reliefs as a step to bringing down costs and catalyse developments.
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.
The Confederation of Real Developers Association of India has said the Government could consider a scheme along the lines of the First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit allowed in the US with the benefits going directly to the consumer.
I am relatively dissatisfied with the budget focus on the sector as no efforts made to the growth of the sector. My wish list to the Finance Minister is to relax the provisioning norms of banks for Real Estate loans, sector status to real estate, clarity on service tax & VAT, with some relaxation and to increase the interest exemption on Housing loan. But then the Finance Minister has not consulted the industry representatives in the last few years.
I would say I am relatively dissatisfied with the focus of budget on realty sector in the last ten years. Our expectations have never been fulfilled and I now demand investments in infrastructure sector should be set as a priority, as good infrastructure is very necessary for the economic growth of the country.
The 2009 Mr. Salim committee report (parliamentary standing committee on housing) lays great emphasis on accelerating housing supply through increasing housing stock and promoting rental housing. It also refers to 24 million home shortage which will soon be 27 Million and ever increasing.
India is today facing a unique challenge of dealing with high inflation, while continuing on its high growth trajectory. Boosting of supply in all industries, including through incentivizing of infrastructure development, streamlining of regulatory process to reduce time and costs for business and tax incentives for low cost housing are all important areas which will help reduce inflation and also enable growth rates to be maintained.
Value and Affordable housing remains a segment where government should definitely continue to provide developers with tax free status which was available earlier. Rather than restricting it to unit sizes as in the past of 1,000 / 1,500 sft per housing unit, the government could instead have a maximum per unit value of say Rs. 15 lakhs for units near Tier I Cities, Rs. 10 lakhs for Tier II Cities.