For a variety of reasons, there has been no growth in the real estate sector in Nellore city and other parts of the district barring Tada, Krishnapatnam industrial areas and such isolated pockets where land values have gone up considerably over the past three to five years.
In Nellore city, it is the story of many a miss between the cup and the lip considering the fact that it has failed to grab the chance of getting the national level multi-crore smart city project which has eventually been sanctioned to Tirupati.
Though several big industries are coming up in Iffco Kisan SEZ and other industrial zones, their benefits in terms of local development are not being transferred to the city area where there is a downtrend in sale of flats and plots for the past four to five years.
Compounding these problems, demonetisation has left a visible impact on the real estate transactions all over the city and other parts of the district significantly that the registrations offices are struggling to meet their targets set for the current year.
There is no sufficient cash in circulation so as to enable the investors to buy lands, plots or flats at the prices being demanded by the sellers and developers.
“Many factors came up at once and they have let down the sector in different ways. To overcome this, more big industries should come and more number of large developmental projects should be taken up here. This will create large-scale employment and bring enough money into circulation,” said P.V. Raghava Rao, chairman of Nellore chapter of Confederation of Real Estate Development Associations of India.
The sales at real estate ventures are considerably slowed down in city. Because of this, developers are selling apartments at ₹ 2,500 per sft as against their preferred price of at least ₹3,000 per sft.
Prime land in city area is touching ₹30 lakh to ₹40 lakh per acre. Going by this, the builders are forced to go slow in taking up new ventures.
Mr. Raghava Rao said that the slowdown may continue for one or two years by which time there will be clarity on the overall impact of the well-intended Real Estate Regulation Act (RERA), demonetisation and the Goods and Service Tax (GST) on the real estate sector.
In other areas in the district, the situation is no better. Gudur town is located equidistant to many industrial zones, including Krishnapatnam port. But the town has become congested without any signs of healthy expansion.
Gudur sub-registrar R. Subbarayudu said their revenue target was brought down from ₹13 crore last year to ₹12 crore this year because of the prevailing unfavourable conditions. Even then, only ₹ 6 crore has been collected till now and it is expected to achieve 90 per cent of the target by the completion of the year, he added.
