Buying that dream house in Bengaluru just became more expensive. The Department of Stamps and Registrations recently issued a final notification hiking the guidance value by 5% to 25% with effect from January 1. The draft notification proposing the hike in guidance value was issued in August last year and approved by the Central Valuation Committee (CVC) in September last.
Guidance value — the base price of properties in a particular area fixed by the government — is a major revenue source for the State. Property registrations cannot go below that fixed price.
K.V. Thrilok Chandra, Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps, said with the hike, the department was confident of meeting the revenue target of ₹10,400 crore set by the State government for 2018-19. As on January 11, 2019, it had mopped up revenue of ₹7,900 crore, an increase of ₹100 crore over the monthly target. He attributed the increase to various reasons, including rush to register properties in the months of November and December 2018 in anticipation of the hike in guidance value but maintained that following the hike, the number of registrations has remained ‘normal’ and not decreased.
Last fiscal (2018-17), the department exceeded the target of ₹9,000 crore by ₹41 crore. “We are confident of exceeding the target this financial year as well,” he added.
The last time the guidance value had been hiked was in March 2017. Ideally, the guidance value hike should be effected annually. “However, due to various reasons, such as the demonetisation slump and Assembly elections, the guidance value could not be revised. The audit revealed that there is a huge gap between the guidance value and market rates,” Mr. Chandra said.
He added that variants were quite high in Bengaluru Urban, especially in the Central Business District and some niche multi-dwelling units as the department did not effect a uniform hike across the board. “The hike range was fixed after an analysis of the sales statistics from all the sub-registrar offices. In Bengaluru Urban alone, there are 43 sub-registrar offices,” said Mr. Chandra. “The CVC poured over all the objections received from citizens. The final notification was issued after incorporating nominal changes in some cases,” he said.
