What are the NRIs who bought their apartments in Delhi NCR to bump them off later at nine times the price, doing right now? The answer: licking their wounds and rubbing their empty craniums.
The real estate industry is an economic eco-system driven by opportunistic greed. There is little or no regulation to guide pricing, offerings, minimum service etc towards the customer and from the builder or real estate company.
D S Rawat, secretary general, Asssociated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) clarifies the greed circle. “The builder thinks of selling the flat as soon as possible without the requisite clearances; the government employee thinks of participating in the payment cycle without making sure all the clearances are set aside as finished paperwork. Everyone thinks of immediate gain without any long term vision. This happens in the absence of a clear cut real estate regulatory policy.”
D S Rawat, secretary general, ASSOCHAM Pix: PTI
Rawat saab as he is fondly known among old timers of New Delhi’s equivalent of fleet street has hit the nail on the head. He sums up the flow of value created for India’s real estate industry as ambitious and greed driven individuals taking advantage of lack of regulation in this market.
“The Real Estate Regulation Bill is a spanner in the works for every player involved in any role in the Indian real estate industry as they all benefit from it in some way or the other,” says the secretary general of ASSOCHAM.
In fact, the only member of this cycle who does not benefit is the consumer. The consumer is the only one who is not part of an organized club or old boys networks. The builders are in a cartel; the bureaucrats stick together and the politicians get their share. The consumer is the only one who stands alone.
Therefore, this column feels that there is a dire need for something like the Housing Development Board flats that are available in Singapore and the rules and bylaws for land use should be something as it is in London, Stuttgart and Bremen.
Once the master plan is in place, there should not be any provision for conversion from one land use to antoher. It does not make any sense to allow a row of 20 houses to be used for residential purposes then allow the eighth, twelfth and eighteenth house to be converted into apartment buildings and the ground floor of those apartments to be converted into commercial use. This is ridiculous.
The law cannot be restricted to paperwork. It has to serve a purpose. However, it cannot serve a purpose if it is only used for the fulfillment of mindless greed and to create an artificial shortage in the market.
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author’s own.