I entered the realty industry on a prom­ise, in 2005, when I came back from U.S.. As someone with a pro­longed stint in the cor­por­ate world, I was always impressed with the num­bers, esp. the size of the mar­ket, the employ­ment & innov­a­tion oppor­tun­it­ies, the healthy growth rate, the pent-up demand and the invest­ment opportunities.

How­ever, the last 5 years haven’t been exactly as it was planned, both per­son­ally, as much as for the industry. When the Industry was on a roll, it res­isted reg­u­la­tion of any sort, as was wont. The com­mon wis­dom as typ­ical Amer­ican – “why fix some­thing when it isn’t broke”. (though Amer­ica boasts of one of the best reg­u­lated Real estate Industry).WHY SO???

Let us com­pare the Tele­com Industry, which is com­par­at­ively younger in India. Within the last 20 years or so, the Industry has grown multi-fold by increas­ing con­sump­tion, offer­ing cut­ting edge products and ser­vices, as well as has a sin­gu­lar author­ity reg­u­lat­ing the Industry and set­ting bench­marks for the future.

The very mis­sion of TRAI announces: “The mis­sion of Tele­com Reg­u­lat­ory Author­ity of India (TRAI) is to ensure that the interests of con­sumers are pro­tec­ted and at the same time to nur­ture con­di­tions for growth of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, broad­cast­ing and cable ser­vices in a man­ner and at a pace which will enable India to play a lead­ing role in the emer­ging global inform­a­tion soci­ety”.

Cut to the real estate industry : The real estate Industry is func­tion­ing under no sin­gu­lar guidelines, respect­ive states and organ­iz­a­tions carry for­ward the busi­ness as it “pre­sumes” good for the Aam-aadmi, the Aam-Aadmi is still hop­ing for sal­va­tion, there are no bench­marks and set stand­ards, and most of all, an industry fore­cas­ted to grow to almost 100 bil­lion dol­lars in size, seems headed in mul­ti­far­i­ous directions.

Crit­ics, play­ers of the Industry and part of the polit­ical class argue that the appoint­ment of a reg­u­lator is not the solu­tion. Per them, the diversity of the coun­try, the frag­men­ted polity, the gov­ernance of dif­fer­ent states by dif­fer­ent polit­ical parties etc. demands a much more loc­al­ised gov­ernance and that one uni­fy­ing body would be akin to cre­at­ing a ‘tooth­less’ tiger. But sir(s), can we cre­ate a single start­ing point? Can we have one dir­ec­tion wherein we can all head to? Can we adapt to tried, tested, best prac­tices already enforced else­where in the world? Can the same India be any dif­fer­ent in the realty industry com­pared to the IT, Tele­com, ser­vices industry? Can we have a level play­ing field for all exist­ing as well as intend­ing play­ers? Can we try and Pos­sibly, ves­ted interest and the lack of a coer­cive will is the biggest reason. The Mango people (aam-aadmi) deserve to remain a fruit to be milked of their juices, in the eyes of the policy maker. How come that we have cer­tain norms in “A” industry, and can’t be enforced in the Real estate Industry? A clear indic­a­tion that the Industry is not uni­fied, and that the policy makers have a “VALID” reason not to enforce a sin­gu­lar norm across the coun­try / Industry.

The unfor­tu­nate dir­ect loser of this apathy is the con­sumer; fol­lowed by the Industry @ large, which seems myopic in intent.

No bet­ter time than today to enforce this… bring in a reg­u­lator for the real estate industry in India. The bene­fits would run across the spec­trum. The cent­ral gov­ern­ment would miss the chance to string all the states, either by con­vic­tion, or coer­cion, if not availed now.

The 100 day agenda of the Min­istry of Urban devel­op­ment released vide the press release on the 29^th June’09 men­tions this :

Point # 16          Real Estate Reg­u­lator for Delhi — Real Estate Man­age­ment (Reg­u­la­tion & Con­trol) Bill for NCT of Delhi will be taken up for decision.

If Delhi is ser­i­ous, and rolls out a cred­ible imple­ment­a­tion plan, that would be the pre­cursor of the reg­u­lator pan-India.

It is time we ser­i­ously con­sidered “Con­sumer interest”, rather than keep try­ing to paint the Don­key to look like the Zebra.

The author is Ajay Dabas Found­ing Part­ner of Certes Realty Ltd. & the views expressed by him are of his own.