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Dream home: Builders want a revolution in real estate sector

To meet the growing housing demand, like green and white revolutions, there must be a real estate revolution, feels developers and experts. They say such a revolution will create surplus housing across the state and particularly in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

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To meet the growing housing demand, like green and white revolutions, there must be a real estate revolution, feels developers and experts. They say such a revolution will create surplus housing across the state and particularly in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

At present, the real estate sector is going through turbulent times. The market is down and there has been no significant sale – skyrocketing prices and difference between the demand and aspiration being the reasons.

"Currently, there is a huge confusion at the policy level. The Centre and the state government are constantly changing their housing and urban policies and this has confused developers as well as investors. If this situation prevails, then the entire sector will be in trouble," said Sunil Mantri, president of National Real Estate Development Council (Naredco) — the developers umbrella body.

Mantri said that the sector is a major contributor to the growth of GDP. "However, It has been ignored. It has huge potential and that needs to be tapped. People want to own their dream home, so government should promote this sector. But the irony is that the government has been working more like a commercial body by bringing more taxes and increasing the percentage of existing levies. The addition in taxes makes this dream home costly.

Actually, there should not be premium on the affordable housing constructions," Mantri said.

He said that earlier telephone calls and aviation services were costly, but they have become cheaper due to the revolution in these sectors. "The same can be done for real estate. We expect a green and white revolution-like change in this sector," said a housing expert.

Shailesh Puranik, MD at Purnaik developer, said that the MMR has huge potentiality. He said that the market will flourish for the next 30 years. "Our economy is growing by 5% to 6% while the US economy has been staggering at 2% to 3%. Besides, urbanisation has been happening at fast pace; so, more houses are a must. Moreover, the government should focus on the approval procedure," said Puranik.

He added: "We have to run from pillar to post to get the approvals. There are almost 58 no objection certificates the developers/promoters have to obtain before starting a project. That consumes almost two-to-three years. And, delay in approval has various cascading effects. It mainly escalates the cost of the project and the increased cost of the project has been always passed to the end user —buyers. If there is speedy approval, then people will get houses on time and at an affordable rate."

Prime minister Narendra Modi had promised that by 2022 each citizen will get a house to stay. On the line of the Centre, the Maharashtra government has planned to construct almost 11 lakh houses — six lakh in Mumbai in the next five years. "Government does make ambitious and gigantic plans but hardly anything comes out of them," said Pankaj Kapoor, MD, Liases Foras, a real estate research firm.

Kapoor said that the government needs to execute its plans seriously. "Government and its departments should work in the tandem, otherwise there is always confusion. In Mumbai, there are multiple government agencies.

One body approves the plan and the same plan gets rejected by another one. There should be a one-window system. The system should be transparent and developer-friendly. The construction of houses should be put at the mission mode and those who have more than one house should be penalised by imposing heavy taxes. The houses should be used for the purpose of staying. It should not be used as a commercial commodity, otherwise buying and selling with huge profit will kill the essence of the dream home," Kapoor pointed out.

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