Track2Realty Exclusive: The Indian real sector has evoked mixed response to the Union Budget 2013-14, though by and large there is optimism within the sector. Here are some of the responses—
“For the real estate and housing sector, this years’ budget has exceeded expectations given the pressure on fiscal situation. Most importantly, it has taken into account the crying need to focus on affordable housing sector by allowing ECB for low cost housing, road as well as construction. Withholding tax on ECBs for affordable housing has been reduced from 20% to 5% for 3 years and this move will help ease the liquidity in the sector.
The Union Budget 2012-13 has left the Indian real estate sector grope with the indecision yet again and everyone is wondering whether the Finance Minister’s offer is glass half full or half empty for them.
Come budget and the real estate sector, like any other industry, comes out with its own wish list. Unfortunately, while other organised industry get a patient hearing through their industry bodies, the Finance minister seem to be hardly entertaining the sector representatives till recently.
There are multiple factors why the home sales in monsoons are subdued. One obvious reason is that the Indians traditionally don’t make any high value purchases after Akshay Tirtiya and before Ganesh Chaturthi. Since a home is the most emotional & aspirational product; is life’s biggest purchase; and is in most of the case for the lifetime; the Indians prefer to wait till the beginning of the festive season. Inauspicious period of Shraddh and Pitripaksh also falls during the monsoon season, where the traditional belief is that any new purchase will invite the curse of the ancestors.
It was expected to be a future ready budget and the overtones in the power corridors were also self-congratulatory in advance. It finally turned out to be pretty ordinary budget for the real estate sector. The stakeholders are nevertheless looking for the silver lining here and there. The most critical stakeholder, the home buyer, is pretty disappointed with the Union Budget 2021-22.
It was not the magic wand it was hoped to be. However, over the past two years, the Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) has brought more sanity – and the return of consumer power – than seemed possible in such a short time. The real estate sector is still struggling with it and the Act is very much work-in-progress in many states, but RERA nevertheless hangs like a sword of Damocles over a previously unregulated industry. Eventual compliance across the board seems inevitable.
While consolidation has been an ongoing phenomenon for some time, recent mergers, acquisitions and joint developments are underscoring this trend like never before. The Indian residential sector saw a series of disruptions in the last two to three years, with revolutionary reforms like DeMo, RERA and GST remarkably altering the way real estate business is conducted. A natural by-product of this upheaval was consolidation, with fly-by-night developers completely vanishing and small players merging with big ones.
Jhumur Ghosh welcomed the panelists, following which Ravi Sinha questioned the global competitiveness of Indian real estate in the wake of thousands of abandoned projects waiting for the funds, the debt-equity ratio imbalance, lending issues, pre-launches without RERA sanctions, and the developers’ defending the indefensible.
While 2018 lived up to a fair number of expectations, there were a few misses too, particularly in the case of clarity on GST norms. Key highlights of 2018 were the creation of positive sentiments in the market by way of a robust office space absorption by emerging segments, as well as increase in the number of new launches and sales in the affordable housing sector.