NAREDCO panel seeks package for realty sector

A delegation of realtors’ body National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to demand a special package to revive the realty sector which include interest subvention on home loans and tax concessions on affordable housing projects.

The real estate sector is facing a huge slowdown from the past few years due to sky-rocketing property prices and high interest cost.

Housing sales have been low, resulting into liquidity crunch and high debt to the developers.

In the meeting, NAREDCO President Sunil Mantri, brought to the notice of Finance Minister that housing sector has been kept out of the Infrastructure definition, while water supply, sanitation, sewage, solid waste management, road etc which are part and parcel of a housing project are included in the definition.

He demanded that housing should be included in the Infrastructure definition under Section 80IA of I-T Act, 1961 to improve funding and augment supply of housing projects.

NAREDCO President also suggested re-introduction of Section 80IB (10) of I-T Act to encourage developers to undertake large scale affordable housing construction.

To enable middle and low income people to buy homes, he suggested that the government should consider housing as a priority sector and extend loans at moderate interest rate, equivalent to RBI repo rate, for all housing units costing up to Rs60 lakh and loan limit of Rs50 lakh. He sought interest subvention on home loans to bring it down to 7-8 per cent.

To provide relief to home buyers, it was suggested that home loan interest deduction should be raised to Rs4 lakh from present Rs2 lakh.

The association also said that there should be no capital gains tax if the sale price of a house is invested in buying one or more houses.

Mantri also requested the Finance Minister for restoration of tax exemptions to SEZs. Jaitley told the delegation that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government had decided to create 2 crore housing units to kick-start the economy, achieve higher GDP growth, create more jobs and above all provide shelter to all, the statement said. — PTI