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We are looking at a potential situation in Mumbai’s office…
The outlook for Chennai’s residential property market remains positive in 2011. This is a stable market, and the prices have risen rationally in tandem with normal market trends. With the IT sector on the upswing and job security once again strong, Chennai’s residential real estate market will see accelerated demand in 2011.
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.
While the realty sector is cribbing for under representation in budget for the last few years, Atul Modak, Head of Mumbai-based Kohinoor City goes a step further to say realty sector not only gets under represented but also it is treated with a bias. He asserts that instead of seeing it as one of the sector responsible for growth of the economy, it is looked with a bias and taxed accordingly. In an interview with Ravi Sinha, he shares his budget wish list and concerns for the sector.
Gone are the days when we were chained to our desk from 9 to 5. How we work is changing. The idea of a “Third Place,” a space that’s neither home nor office but where people want to spend a portion of their lives, was introduced as far back as 1989 in Ray Oldenburg’s book “The Great Good Place.” Today, thanks to the advent of wireless technology, the concept has evolved from being merely from a civic or entertainment space and now also applies to a flexible work space for mobile employees.
There will be significant changes in term of the redevelopment of Mumbai seafront with the revamping of the Coastal Regulation Zone norms that direct construction in these areas. Numerous old structures and unregulated residential developments that have been awaiting this signal in the areas in question will now be redeveloped.