The Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (Credai) will push for amendments to the proposed Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, which, if implemented in its present form, could lead to cartelisation by big players and sharply increase user-end housing costs.
Addressing a press conference ahead of the two-day ‘SOUTHCON 2013’ beginning on Friday, office bearers of the apex body of realtors said while a regulator to penalise offenders was certainly in order, some provisions in the Bill were unfairly loaded against developers and would scare away smaller players from the sector.
In a scenario of cartelisation, user-end costs for housing units could go up by 40 per cent, said T. Chitty Babu, SOUTHCON chairman.
“The main problem with some of the provisions was developers could end up being penalised for a project’s time-schedule issues over which they had no control,” said Ram Reddy, Credai, Andhra Pradesh.
Credai wanted these issues to be addressed when the Bill became law.
N. Nandakumar, Credai president in Tamil Nadu, said the government should fully engage the real-estate developer community in the rollout of affordable housing policies.
“We certainly are keen on participating in and contributing solutions for the implementation of affordable housing policy but there has to be a concerted effort from the government to engage developers,” he said.
Raghuchandran Nair, chairman of Credai, Kerala, said while provisioning power and water for new housing projects was not a problem in the State, the real estate sector was hampered by low-width roads, sourcing of tiles, cement and sand from other States, particularly Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
CREDAI also wanted the ‘Residex’, a housing price indicator evolved by the National Housing Bank, to account for better parameters in order to be a more realistic reflection of the market.
The second edition of SOUTHCON 2013 will, for the first time, open its doors to non-members and allied professionals such as real-estate consultants. The two-day event will also focus on sharing best practices with participants from Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
