Real estate industry hit with high registry charges

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 4

The local real estate industry received another dampener with the state government enhancing the registry charges for property by one per cent on account of infrastructure development charges.

Already the Income Tax Department’s move to make it mandatory to pay through cheque for any property deal exceeding Rs 20,000 has not gone down well in the real estate market.

Both moves are likely to hit the real estate market which is already passing through a bad phase in the holy city.

The Majha Zone Property Dealers Association president, Sanjeev Rampal, said rising inflation and the high cost of living has already left little funds with people to save. He said the governments were regularly coming out with new policies making it tough for people to invest in property. This resulted in denying opportunity to property dealers to earn a livelihood by dealing in the sale and purchase of properties.

“Already, the policies of the state government have hit the real-estate industry for long,” said Rampal. When asked that the Amritsar Improvement Trust had earned a handsome amount from the land in its various residential schemes, real estate dealers and developers said there was always a demand for approved colonies within the city.

They said the business has taken a nosedive in the rest of the colonies in the city. They said the rate of properties came down on the Airport road from Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,000 per square yard during the past two years. A similar decline can be sensed on the Amritsar-Jalandhar GT road, the Tarn Taran road and other areas of the city. Besides, the price value of the agricultural land has also come down.

Citing an instance, they said earlier the District Revenue Department used to register about 500 properties in each of its two branches. However, the rate of registering the properties came down to only seven or eight registeries per day.

They said the policies comprising mandatory NoCs for the colonies set up after 1995, two per cent fee on the collector rate for power of attorney and others were having an adverse impact on the properties.

Earlier, the Ministry of Finance made it mandatory under 269 SS to make any transaction above Rs 20,000 in purchasing property through cheque or DD. He said the new law came into force from June 1 but a majority of the property transactions registered during this period did not follow the law.