A jittery tale in Jat land

Pradeep Sharma

Still struggling to come to terms with the blow dealt by demonetisation, the realty sector in Haryana grappled with uncertainty in 2017 as low sale volumes forced realtors to focus on consolidation rather than expansion.

The year started with the after effects of demonetisation on the recession-hit realty sector. The supply-demand mismatch further widened with the developers adopting newer techniques to sell the existing stocks rather than going in for the new projects. However, despite discounts and other incentives,  the builders were only partially successful in disposing off the existing stocks. End user was the king as the investors adopted a wait-and-watch policy in spite of cut in the home loan interest rates.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST), Benami Property Act  and the implementation of the Real Estate Regulation & Development Act (RERA), affected the sector in a variety of ways. The implementation of RERA, however, increased the hope that transparency and accountability will change the contours of this highly-unregulated sector.

Haryana appointed RERA chairmen for its Gurugram and Panchkula benches with two former bureaucrats being appointed to the posts.

Subsidised housing for the common man, including allotment of land to the group housing societies by the Haryana Urban Development Authority(HUDA), became a thing of the past as the state government adopted a new system of the auction of land to  the group housing societies making it virtually impossible for the allottees to own society apartments.

Experts, however, flayed the retrograde decision on HUDA’s new allotment policy to the group housing societies.” In a developing country like India, the state agencies such as HUDA need to allot land to the cooperative societies at concessional rates. Housing, especially affordable housing,can’t be put at the mercy of big corporate players,” contended B.K Sanghi, a real estate expert.

However, the Central Government came up with its own version of “affordable housing”  with the  launch of the new Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) to popularise mass housing. The Manohar Lal Khattar-led government leaving no stone unturned to popularise the scheme to provide housing to the lower strata of society.

In the wake of ongoing recession, the state government continued to shower incentives on the builders, which included making affordable housing policy more attractive and allowing more time for the clearance of dues such as pending external development charges (EDC). 

However, the government sops failed to cheer up the recession-hit realty sector.