What do you think about the current scenario of real estate market in North India?
North Indian market has gone through a major metamorphosis, from being purely investor driven to a price conscious market of end users. Today, end users are willing to take a product from a developer who is backed by corporate performance, clean balance sheet and efficient delivery record. So, it’s a complete shift from a person who used to look only at money as an output to a person who is now seeing ready house which is good to live in and is of good quality & design. In North India, the model of development is the sub-urban model and a major advantage is that Metro has reached to most of the satellite towns. In the coming days these satellite towns will be a good investment destination as they are close to Delhi and better in terms of livability.
Which are the upcoming realty micro markets in North India?
Faridabad, Gurgaon, Rewari, Bahadurgarh and Sonepat in Haryana are some of the upcoming micro markets around Delhi. These are the markets which have made money and are accepted as secondary markets outside Delhi. As compared to Delhi government and Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Haryana government has a better understanding of town planning and is making new laws and monitoring them. Mohali in Punjab too has seen development at a very large scale.
From the location prospective, Sonepat is one of the fastest growing satellite towns near the Delhi NCR. It offers truly luxury affordable housing because of land prices. In times to come, with Wanda Group of China signing a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with the Haryana State Government, KMP expressway getting commissioned in next one year and Delhi-Panipat road getting widened, the macro developments in this region will see higher demand in short term and increased pricing in the long term.
In Sonepat, we have a land bank of 650 acres out of which 214 acres is the first project which is fully licensed and we have started deliveries of around 600 homes and will be now very soon giving delivery of next 500 homes also. In Kurkshetra, Haryana, out of and 250 acres of land bank, 100 acres has been developed and delivered and we are now looking at developing the next phase.
What has been the impact of latest policy developments on real-estate market?
In my opinion the macro policies of the Government have given the very important opportunity to the real estate sector to cleanse itself of all the problems it is associated with. RERA will bring transparency and the opportunity for the consumer to take a conscious decision on the basis of disclosures of the developers. The regulate real-estate will ensure that only serious developers will remain. Likewise, GST does away with double taxation. There is some clarity still required but once it gets rolled out it things will become much clearer. Demonetization will not have such a big impact on primary developers whose transactions are without major cash component but, the secondary market where cash forms a major component of transactions will get highly impacted. Anyways, most of the homebuyers today avail loan and the transactions are more or less getting cashless.
Overall, transparency and ease of doing business is a welcome step but land acquisition still remains a challenge not only for private developers but for government projects like roads and infrastructure acquiring land is difficult.
Housing for All is a laudable initiative but the only question is that how this initiative will be delivered because there is a lack of proper roadmap. The metro cities don’t have land and no private developer is going to make houses in rural areas. So, there is an opportunity but how it can be en-cashed is still in grey zone.
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