The endeavour for a real estate regulator continues

By: Sachin Sandhir, Managing Director-South Asia, RICS

Track2Realty Exclusive: Several factors such as multinational entrepreneurship, robust capital markets, strong economic fundamentals and changing demographics have collectively resulted in India finding its place on the world map.

With the country standing on the brink of excessive urbanisation as projected by a recent report on Urban Planning by the High Powered Steering Committee, India will witness one of the largest urban migrations of the world, with a population of 600 million expected to inhabit cities by 2030.

The effects of this migration are already being felt, with a heightened demand for residential and commercial properties and the need for developed infrastructure systems. As a consequence, over the last decade the real estate and construction sector has seen phenomenal activity.

Regarded as the foundation of development, the realty and construction sector has played an all important role in the transformation of India to its present industrialised and urban state. Construction activity has further been augmented by government emphasis on infrastructure, which is considered as the most essential ingredient to the nation building process.

But like any coin, the sector has a flip side. While several inroads have been made in engineering and design, building materials, and equipment to keep pace with the growing demands for property and infrastructure, the sector continues to grapple with numerous challenges with respect to capacity constraints, lack of trained and skilled manpower, loopholes in contract procurement and processing mechanisms, cost overruns, antiquated laws and policies, lack of enforcement and implementation of reforms etc.

To maintain a much needed balance in the sector and for India to be considered as one of the leading property markets in the world, not only in terms of size but also on account of quality and professionalism, dynamic changes are the order of the day.

However, to understand and evaluate the performance of the sector, several of these parameters need to be considered sooner rather than later, which will ultimately result in a road map and impact the future prospects and efficiency of the sector.