A friendly budget is always on the wish list of everyone. Across the industries the stakeholders, including the consumers, have more or less the same expectations with the Finance Minister to call it a friendly budget. But in the context of the Indian real estate a friendly budget for the sector does not necessarily mean a homebuyer friendly budget.
Track2Realty Exclusive: On the eve of Union Budget every year the Indian real estate sector seems to be fighting a losing battle with the government. For long the policy advocacy of the sector has amounted to confrontation with the policy makers where the sector proposes and the Finance Minister disposes.
Track2Realty Exclusive: There is no denying that the Union Budget 2014-15 has incentivised the eco system of the Indian real estate both for the developers as well as the buyers. Many of the announcements by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may not have any direct bearing on the fortunes of the real estate developers in this fiscal year, yet the symbolic sops are enough to silence the otherwise overtly critical sector for some time now.
Track2Realty: Walking on a tight rope of fiscal management, the Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram did his best to bring smiles on the faces of home buyers. Something that should cheer up the real estate sector looking left, right and centre for buyers with piling inventory. Still, a section of real estate is sulking. Why so? Track2Realty tries to understand the grey zones where for the realtors it was a case of “ye did maange more.”
Track2Realty Exclusive: Wading in troubled water, when the Indian real sector was looking for direction through the Union Budget 2013-14, the Finance Minister seems to have given symbolic relief to the sector by encouraging the home buyers but at the same time has denied the sector some of the long pending substantive demands. To allow an additional tax deduction of Rs 1, 00,000 on interest rate for home loans up to Rs 25 lakh, the Union Budget has aimed to give more boost in low cost housing segment.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Come budget and the real estate in the last few years seems to have been repeating the rhetoric of industry status. As a result, year after year it has been a case of realty proposes and the Finance Minister disposes. However, the sector on the eve of 2013-14 makes a strategic shift to be more realistic with its causes and concerns.
Track2Realty: Responding to Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s suggestion for reducing the price of housing stock, Confederation of Real Estate developers’ Associations of India (CREDAI) has asked its 8,000 plus members across the country to seriously consider the proposal to sell in maximum numbers.
When the Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee proposed home buyers to withhold 1% of the sale consideration as Tax Deducted at Source (TDS), it became a free-for-all kind of football match with developers and property consultants alleging that it could encourage black money component in real estate, while tax consultants believed otherwise and pointed out that the reach of the banking sector in rural area makes it easier to detect unsavoury deals.
It is a highly disappointing budget. The Finance Minister has miserably failed in highlighting the importance the role of Housing in economy, employment generation, apart from the very need of housing. The announcements on ECB for affordable housing is a minor respite but still meaningless.
Industry body NAREDCO admits that a lot is needed by the Finance Minister rather than just the tax exemption, which again was needed keeping in view the housing shortage which is one of the biggest challenge for the government of the day.