Delhi Gov­ern­ment joins hands with NIFT, two other insti­tutes
Source: The Hindu
Dated: 26^th July 10

The Indus­tries Depart­ment of the Delhi Gov­ern­ment has tied up with National Insti­tute of Fash­ion Tech­no­logy (NIFT), MITCON and National Insti­tute for Entre­pren­eur­ship and Small Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for impart­ing train­ing to its own instruct­ors as well as to NIFT students.

Accord­ing to Delhi Indus­tries Min­is­ter Har­oon Yusuf, NIFT has already impar­ted train­ing to exist­ing instruct­ors and one-month cam­pus train­ing to 68 stu­dents of Soci­ety for Self Employ­ment. This included a week’s train­ing with indus­tries for both stu­dents and instructors.

Speak­ing about recent devel­op­ments in the indus­tries sec­tor of Delhi, Mr. Yusuf said under the Prime Minister’s Employ­ment Gen­er­a­tion Pro­gramme, fin­an­cial assist­ance up to Rs.25 lakh will be provided to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and up to Rs.10 lakh to the busi­ness or ser­vice sector.

While only two cases were final­ised under this scheme in 2008-09, Mr Yusuf said the num­ber of cases was much higher the fol­low­ing year. In 2009-10, he said, 1,388 cases were pro­posed of which 694 were recom­men­ded and 103 busi­nesses received dis­burse­ments from the banks.

The Gov­ern­ment is also plan­ning to impart train­ing in appro­pri­ate skills to more employ­ees and stu­dents to ensure max­imum employ­ment and employ­ab­il­ity for the people of Delhi.

Four trades only

“Till now, the Indus­tries Depart­ment has been impart­ing voca­tional train­ing in only four trades through the Soci­ety for Self Employ­ment to an aver­age of 180 can­did­ates per year. Now the Indus­tries Depart­ment has intro­duced 20 voca­tional train­ing pro­grammes in 16 new trades with a tar­get of 2,600 can­did­ates dur­ing 2010-11. Fur­ther, 800 can­did­ates are to be impar­ted entre­pren­eur­ship train­ing for self employ­ment dur­ing the year. The exist­ing syl­labi have also been revised to suit mar­ket demand to meet the needs of the industries.”

Mr. Yusuf said the main­ten­ance and addi­tion of infra­struc­ture in most of the indus­trial areas in Delhi that had been suf­fer­ing owing to the absence of integ­rated man­age­ment was now all set to improve.

The Delhi Indus­trial Devel­op­ment, Oper­a­tion and Main­ten­ance Bill, 2010, which was passed in the last budget ses­sion of the Delhi Assembly has now become an Act with the assent given to it by the Pres­id­ent of India, he added.

Stat­ing that the new Act empowers the Delhi State Indus­trial and Infra­struc­ture Devel­op­ment Cor­por­a­tion to redevelop indus­trial clusters in non-conforming areas as well, the Min­is­ter said the Cor­por­a­tion would also be respons­ible for devel­op­ment and main­ten­ance of infra­struc­ture in all the indus­trial estates that are being main­tained by the Muni­cipal Cor­por­a­tion of Delhi.

“To ensure min­imum dis­lo­ca­tion of indus­trial clusters oper­at­ing in non-conforming areas, 22 areas with 70 per cent indus­trial con­cen­tra­tion have been noti­fied by the Gov­ern­ment for redevel­op­ment in accord­ance with the new Mas­ter Plan for Delhi, 2021,” he said, adding that the DSIIDC has been asked to put in place a model indus­trial estate within a year.

 

Zonal Devel­op­ment plans noti­fied– Pub­lic notice by DDA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delays still ail realty sec­tor, 25 pro­jects to miss dead­line
Source: Live Mint
Dated: 26^th July 10

New Delhi/Bangalore: The mul­tiple towers of DLF Ltd’s Magno­lias hous­ing pro­ject in Gur­gaon seem com­plete from the out­side but it will take another year or so before the 589 premium apart­ments can be handed over to buy­ers, adding up to a three-year delay.

The country’s largest developer by mar­ket value launched the pro­ject in 2005. The pro­ject was to be fin­ished by 2008; the new dead­line is mid-2011.

As with sev­eral other ven­tures dur­ing the realty boom, the pro­ject was kicked off with an over­seas part­ner, UK-based con­struc­tion firm Laing O’Rourke (LOR), through a joint ven­ture. But LOR exited its India busi­ness last year and DLF is now the sole developer.

“Due to this adjust­ment, the pro­ject got delayed. Con­struc­tion is on now,” said Rajeev Tal­war, exec­ut­ive dir­ector, DLF.

Pro­ject delays con­tinue to dog home buy­ers even as build­ers bet big on the res­id­en­tial seg­ment to steer them to recov­ery after the bust of 2008. Mint research shows at least 25 large res­id­en­tial pro­jects in the Delhi-National Cap­ital Region (NCR), Ban­galore, Pune and Mum­bai are about 18 months behind sched­ule, keep­ing buy­ers wait­ing while the firms them­selves get on with new projects.

“It is doubt­ful if developers are ser­i­ous about com­plet­ing those pro­jects that are lag­ging behind as pri­or­ity, because the focus is on rak­ing in money by launch­ing pro­jects at a pre­ma­ture level,” said Amit Goenka, national dir­ector, cap­ital trans­ac­tions, Knight Frank India, a prop­erty advis­ory. “Nearly all large pro­jects are 12 – 18 months behind schedule.”

The pro­ject delays will only worsen the sub­stan­tial invent­ory pile-up, which amounts to about 140 mil­lion sq. ft in the res­id­en­tial seg­ment alone in Delhi-NCR, accord­ing to data by Mumbai-based Liases Foras, which tracks the realty sector.

Mum­bai, which has seen the max­imum prop­erty sales since Novem­ber, has 80 mil­lion sq. ft of space unsold, includ­ing prop­erty that’s ready or under construction.

The inab­il­ity of the developers to com­plete pro­jects has been com­poun­ded by buy­ers fall­ing behind on pay­ments and curbs on bank financing.

Bri­gade Enter­prises Ltd’s Bri­gade Gate­way in north Ban­galore is three years behind sched­ule, although some homes have been handed over to buy­ers. It will take two years for all 1,100 apart­ments to be given to their buy­ers, said a senior com­pany offi­cial on con­di­tion of anonymity.

“While I have got keys of my apart­ment recently after a long wait, interior fit-outs of other units are yet to fin­ish,” said Pad­man­abha, a home buyer in Bri­gade Gateway.

Smal­ler firms such as Omaxe Ltd, Pars­vnath Developers Ltd, QVC Realty and Lodha Developers Ltd have also delayed many of their lux­ury projects.

Omaxe launched The Forest in Faridabad in 2008 and star­ted some pre­lim­in­ary work at the time but con­struc­tion com­menced only this month.

“Due to some con­fu­sion related to con­struc­tion activ­ity in the Ara­vali range among gov­ern­ment agen­cies, we stalled con­struc­tion as a pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ure. We have resumed con­struc­tion… which is going on in full swing now,” said an Omaxe spokes­per­son. The tent­at­ive com­ple­tion date is mid-2012.

Pars­vnath, which has sev­eral pro­jects under con­struc­tion, has delayed Exot­ica in Ghaziabad and PrideAsia in Chand­igarh. While book­ings in the second are on hold, Exot­ica is likely to be com­plete by the end of 2012.

A spokes­man for Pars­vnath said five towers at Exot­ica have been delivered and the remain­ing 13 towers, part of an exten­sion, will be com­pleted in two years. He declined to com­ment on PrideAsia as the pro­ject is the sub­ject of lit­ig­a­tion in a Chand­igarh court.

Mean­while, Mumbai’s Lodha, des­pite the delay of a year and a half at its high-end Bel­lis­simo pro­ject, launched its much-hyped World One pro­ject in June.

A senior Lodha offi­cial, who can’t be named, said there was no shift in focus towards new pro­jects. “Con­struc­tion is on at Bel­lis­simo and it is an import­ant pro­ject for us and we have seen good sales,” he said.

Delays have put pres­sure on pri­cing and sales, ana­lysts said.

When DLF launches its Mum­bai tex­tile mill pro­ject soon, five years after buy­ing the land for Rs702 crore, the rates are going to be lower than what pre­vails in the area. Two ana­lysts, who didn’t want to be named, said the developer is pre-selling stock at Rs15,000 – 18,000 per sq. ft.

DLF’s Tal­war said the com­pany is not in a hurry to launch the pro­ject and will see how the mar­ket pans out, con­sid­er­ing there is huge sup­ply of high-end res­id­en­tial space com­ing into Lower Parel alone.

In the Delhi-NCR region, sev­eral new sec­tors have been opened up for devel­op­ment in Gur­gaon under the 2021 mas­ter­plan, where prop­erty rates are 30 – 40% lower than those in exist­ing sectors.

“But lack of infra­struc­ture has forced developers to either stop the con­struc­tion or go slow with the pro­gress,” said San­jay Sharma, con­sult­ant and man­aging dir­ector of con­sult­ant firm Qubrex.com.

 

KANJHAWALA TO BE DEVELOPED AS KNOWLEDGE BASED INDUSTRIAL HUB
Priya M. Mathew
19. July’ 2010

The Delhi State Indus­trial devel­op­ment cor­por­a­tion (DSIDC) has unveiled an ambi­tious devel­op­ment plan for new indus­trial hubs in Delhi, along with a com­pre­hens­ive vis­ion to redevelop 22 of the exist­ing Indus­trial areas of Delhi. Mr. Chetan Sanghi, the Chair­man & man­aging Dir­ector of DSIDC informed that approx. 2000 crores would be the cap­ital expendit­ure to develop these areas on a self-financing basis.

The same would be redeveloped as per the pro­vi­sions of the MPD 2021, which is already noti­fied vide S.O # 141, and the zonal plans have been recently noti­fied fur­ther. In a recently issued state­ment, Mr. Sanghi is quoted as say­ing  ”To begin with, DSIIDC has signed a Memor­andum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) with Mun­dka Indus­trial Area Wel­fare Soci­ety. Other key areas to be developed are Libaspur, Mada­vli, Shah­dra, Naresh Park, Rithala, Hasthal and Swaran Park,” he said.

In Mun­dka, approx. 400 acres is ear­marked for redevel­op­ment includ­ing the clusters loc­ated at the small scale indus­tries, Phirni road and Mun­dka Udyog Nagar (south side). Per the pro­vi­sions of MPD 2021, sites with approx. 70% Indus­trial activ­ity are being con­sidered to be taken up for devel­op­ment in the first phase. Ajay Dabas, Dir­ector, Certes Realty Ltd, a con­sult­ing com­pany with deep know­ledge base about zone N of MPD 2021 avers. “if these plans are taken for real­istic imple­ment­a­tion, we would see more than 400 acres of exist­ing Indus­trial areas under redevel­op­ment in these lis­ted areas. Couple it with the Indus­trial devel­op­ment in Kan­jhawala, both Lal Dora and acquired land, we can safely see more than 1000 acres of Indus­trial devel­op­ment under the approved zonal plans of “N” zone.”

The DSIDC chair­man agrees that most of these areas have make­shift non car­peted roads and not con­nec­ted with amen­it­ies like water & sew­er­age. Since these are being pro­posed to be developed as self suf­fi­cient / self fin­anced basis, the Indus­trial area wel­fare soci­ety can gen­er­ate funds through its mem­bers and bear the cost of redevelopment.

”The DSIIDC is also ready to dis­trib­ute another 10,000 houses to the poor under the JNNURM. About 4,000 houses are under con­struc­tion and will be ready in six months,” informs Chetan Sanghi. Ajay Dabas adds that “the Ghevra, Savda, Bakkar­wala & Bap­rola devel­op­ments by the city admin­is­tra­tion and DDA augurs well for the indus­trial houses to attract tal­ent & work­force to this part of town by offer­ing bet­ter qual­ity of life.

Mr. Sanghi also informed that the DSIDC plans to develop over 700 acres of land in Kan­jhawala, for devel­op­ment of “Know­ledge based & Green Indus­tries”. Read­ers would recall that this cor­res­pond­ent had repor­ted the news almost 6 months ago, wherein it was argued that the Indus­tries would neces­sar­ily have to be developed on the Know­ledge plat­form under Kan­jhawala where water, infra­struc­ture, roads & trans­port­a­tion are not a con­straint even currently.

Ajay Dabas avers that ‘Given the vis­ion of MPD 2021 to accom­mod­ate more than 1.5 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion in NW Delhi, the kan­jhawala area offers the most sig­ni­fic­ant land assets for devel­op­ment. Added to this would be the devel­op­ment of the more than 450 acres of exten­ded Lal dora lands into res­id­en­tial assets, which can offer scourge from high prices in adjoin­ing Rohini to the white & blue collared work­ers in these Indus­trial areas”.

The DSIIDC would also take over 29 indus­trial estates from the Muni­cipal Cor­por­a­tion  of Delhi (MCD)  and the Delhi Devel­op­ment Author­ity (DDA) under the new Indus­trial Main­ten­ance Law. This work will start in six months.

 

Delhi top des­tin­a­tion for end users look­ing to pur­chase flats
Source: Realty Plus
July 20, 2010

Delhi is the most pop­u­lar place to buy a prop­erty, accord­ing to a new survey.

The report reveals that 34 per cent of those sur­veyed want to pur­chase a flat in Delhi, fol­lowed by 28 per cent plug­ging for Mum­bai and 11 per cent each opt­ing for Ban­galore and Hydera­bad. The sur­vey also reveals that the realty sec­tor in 2010 is going to be driven by end users.

Due to the reces­sion and fluc­tu­at­ing prop­erty prices, prop­erty seekers shied away from mak­ing a prop­erty pur­chase last year — but with an improv­ing eco­nomy and slightly stable prop­erty prices, end users are ready to jump into the mar­ket this year. Most of the buy­ers who are inter­ested in buy­ing a house this year want it for their per­sonal use with 67 per cent of those sur­veyed cit­ing this reason. Some 23 per cent are look­ing for prop­erty as a long-term invest­ment while 10 per cent are look­ing at it through the prism of a short-term investment.

The sur­vey has also found that the cost of buy­ing a prop­erty is mar­gin­ally higher now due to the hike in prices of con­struc­tion mater­ial, taxes and rising interest rates. Cement and steel prices are increas­ing and this is likely to be passed on dir­ectly by developers to the cus­tom­ers while a 10 per cent ser­vice tax on pur­chase of apart­ments will make buy­ing more costly, accord­ing to the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Real Estate Developers Asso­ci­ation of India (CREDAI).

Recently, the State Bank of India, one of the lead­ing play­ers in the hous­ing fin­ance mar­ket, raised interest rates on home loans. Although the bank will con­tinue with its 8 per cent teaser rate for the first year, it has increased rates for sub­sequent years. “There is a strong pos­sib­il­ity of price hike as factors like ser­vice tax and rise of input prices will be passed on to the end users,” Raj Menda of CREDAI said.

The real estate sec­tor had been hit by the reces­sion due to fall­ing demand and repay­ment pres­sures. How­ever, the sec­tor is now look­ing up with some tan­gible signs of eco­nomic revival. “Roughly, as of now, real estate developers are saddled with 6 per cent of unsold prop­er­ties. In com­mer­cial prop­erty, there is an over­sup­ply, which is expec­ted to be absorbed in the next two years,” Menda added.

Banks are still cau­tious about provid­ing hous­ing loan to con­sumers and ask­ing for higher col­lat­er­als for lend­ing to real estate developers. But sev­eral prop­erty deals are being can­celled due to the addi­tional costs being levied by developers, accord­ing to Yash­want Dalal, pres­id­ent of the Estate Agents Asso­ci­ation of India. He explained that many developers have decided to col­lect ser­vice tax, which adds up to nearly 4 per cent of the price at the time of hand­ing over.

Dur­ing the pre-global down­turn prop­erty boom, many investors bought flats anti­cip­at­ing that the rates would go up fur­ther and just paid the builder the value of the flat, he explained. “The agree­ment at that time did not men­tion any­thing about the ser­vice tax or the value added tax.

Now, with prop­erty prices increas­ing past their pre-2008 peak, the developers insist on col­lect­ing the ser­vice tax and the 1 per cent VAT when the investors try to sell these flats. They also have to pay the main­ten­ance charges on the flat if it has not been paid yet. The buyer finds all these addi­tional charges too costly to bear,” Dalal added.

How­ever, a row has broken out over a pro­posed 2.5 per cent ser­vice tax on all prop­er­ties under con­struc­tion amid con­cerns about the effect it might have on the country’s recov­er­ing res­id­en­tial real estate mar­ket. The urban devel­op­ment min­istry wants the tax to be with­drawn des­pite it win­ning sup­port when it was announced as part of the 2010-11 Budget. The min­istry believes that the new tax will hamper the recov­ery from the eco­nomic slowdown.

Accord­ing to the urban devel­op­ment min­is­ter Jaipal Reddy, the prop­erty sec­tor is still going through a dif­fi­cult phase and the ser­vice tax could hurt its interests as well as those of the middle class buy­ers who are needed to boost the industry. Soar­ing prop­erty prices in Mum­bai are believed to be put­ting the pur­chase of a house bey­ond the reach of many people, espe­cially middle-class fam­il­ies as all that they can afford are one-bedroom flats, which are not suit­able for their needs.

There is con­cern that greedy developers are hik­ing prices and while there is more demand in the higher price brack­ets, this kind of price hike for nor­mal prop­er­ties is not sus­tain­able. Ana­lysts say some developers are adding on extra costs for flower­beds, view­ing decks and club­houses that are not needed. Then the hikes can be up to 50 per cent.

The industry is hop­ing that the soon-to-be-launched national real estate index will also help the sec­tor as buy­ers, sellers, developers and ana­lysts get a reli­able set of figures.

The yet-to-be-finalized real estate price index is likely to be based on prop­erty prices in 13 cit­ies. These will be Greater Mum­bai, Chen­nai, the National Cap­ital Region of Delhi, Ban­galore, Hydera­bad , Kolk­ata, Pune, Jaipur, Greater Chand­igarh, Ahmedabad, Luc­know, Bho­pal and Bhubaneswar.

An expert com­mit­tee, which was formed by the Reserve Bank of India in Decem­ber 2008 for devel­op­ing the inform­a­tion sys­tem on asset pri­cing, said it needed to track both sale and resale prices as well as the rental sec­tors on a reg­u­lar basis. It will use offi­cial data on house rents from the Con­sumer Price Index (Urban) that is com­piled by the Cent­ral Stat­ist­ical Organ­isa­tion and will sup­ple­ment bank data through a sur­vey con­duc­ted annu­ally so as to ensure the robust­ness of the data avail­able within the bank­ing system.

 

RIL’s Hary­ana SEZ watered down
Source: Realty Plus
July 20, 2010

The ori­ginal concept of a 25,000-acre set of two Spe­cial Eco­nomic Zones (SEZ) pro­posed by Reli­ance Indus­tries Ltd (RIL) in Hary­ana four years ago has been amended, with watered-down fea­tures. Reliance’s request for a change in the concept of the pro­ject fol­low­ing its fail­ure to aggreg­ate suf­fi­cient land in Gur­gaon and Jhaj­jar, and due to the eco­nomic slow­down, has been approved by the Hary­ana Invest­ment Pro­mo­tion Board.

The com­pany has said it was feel­ing a ser­i­ous impact of the eco­nomic envir­on­ment while execut­ing the pro­posed pro­ject. “Even though exports were show­ing recov­ery, no fresh capa­cit­ies were being cre­ated, as a res­ult of which the SEZ fla­vour, though attract­ive, was not suf­fi­cient to invite large invest­ments,” said a Reli­ance communiqué.

As per the revised pro­posal, Reli­ance Hary­ana SEZ Ltd (RHSL), a joint ven­ture of RIL and the Hary­ana State Indus­trial and Infra­struc­ture Devel­op­ment Cor­por­a­tion, will now set up a Model Eco­nomic Town­ship (MET) at Jhaj­jar, instead of the earlier planned SEZ of 12,500 acres in the dis­trict, accord­ing to a report pub­lished in Mint.

The MET, which will be broadly on the lines of an indus­trial model town­ship (IMT), is likely to have Infra­struc­ture Leas­ing and Fin­an­cial Ser­vice Ltd (IL&FS) as co-developer. It will com­prise a logist­ics hub, a power plant, SEZ, know­ledge city, domestic tar­iff areas (DTA).

In Gur­gaon, RHSL now plans to set up a multi-sector spe­cific SEZ on 1,501 acres, in place of the earlier pro­posed multi-services SEZ on 1,086 acres. Room has also been made to rope in a stra­tegic investor on ini­tial sub­scrip­tion of RHSL equity.

RHSL claims to have inves­ted about Rs 3,000 crore over the past four years in the two 12,500-acre SEZ projects.

 

Soon, cell­phone towers may not be allowed atop houses
Source: DNA India
Tues­day, July 20, 2010 0:23 IST

Mum­bai: Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the Muni­cipal Cor­por­a­tion of Delhi (MCD), the Bri­han­mum­bai Muni­cipal Cor­por­a­tion (BMC) has decided to appoint experts to con­duct a study on cell­phone towers and gauge if they should be allowed to be installed in res­id­en­tial areas.

The civic body wants to know if there are any haz­ard­ous effects of radi­ation from mobile towers. Based on the find­ings of the study, the BMC will for­mu­late a policy on mobile towers on the lines imple­men­ted by the MCD, and may bar them from being erec­ted near hos­pit­als and schools.

The issue was raised at a recent gen­eral body meet­ing of the BMC by Shiv Sena corpor­ator Anuradha Ped­nekar after she received numer­ous com­plaints from res­id­ents in her ward. Man­isha Mhais­kar, addi­tional muni­cipal com­mis­sioner, then called a meet­ing of deans of muni­cipal hos­pit­als on Monday.

“After the issue was raised in the cor­por­a­tion, I had writ­ten to the dir­ector of health to con­sti­tute a core team to give sug­ges­tions. It was felt that the issue of mobile towers needs to be stud­ied. A policy will be framed based on MCD’s model. The study will stress on whether mobile towers have haz­ard­ous effects, and whether there is a need to spe­cify the area and loc­a­tion for them,” said Mhais­kar, adding that a pro­posal based on the Delhi model will be tabled before the stand­ing com­mit­tee soon.

The MCD has ruled that mobile are not allowed on school and hos­pital build­ings. In case of res­id­en­tial build­ings, per­mis­sions will have to be sought from all flat occu­pants of the build­ing. It will ensure that there are no health haz­ards and the cell net­work is also not disrupted.

The MCD has decided to give pref­er­ence to those places for set­ting up of mobile towers which are fre­quen­ted for shortest time peri­ods, like mar­kets and shop­ping centres. It also has stricter norms for installing mobile towers and has made the owner of the prop­erty a co-applicant for per­mis­sion. The ser­vice pro­vider will also have to sub­mit that the pro­posed tower is not harm­ful to the health of nearby res­id­ents. Towers more than five years old will have to be replaced within a month.

MCD’s com­mit­tee had also observed that cell phone towers are dam­aging the city’s skyline.

 

Hid­den Poten­tial
Source: Hindus­tan Times
Dated: 17^th July 10

Con­sol­id­at­ing and redevel­op­ing land par­cels can gen­er­ate addi­tional real estate sup­ply in Delhi, if the Mas­ter Plan is imple­men­ted prop­erly, says Vandana Ramnani.

Sagar Sethi and his wife Mrid­ula, both 62, live in a 750 sq m bun­ga­low in South Delhi. Both their chil­dren are settled abroad. They have con­tem­plated selling their house to a developer and shift­ing to the sub­urbs but fear they may have prob­lems set­tling down in a new envir­on­ment at their age. Naresh Mehta and his wife, both also in their six­ties, face a sim­ilar prob­lem. They live in Patel Nagar in West Delhi.

The new Mas­ter Plan of Delhi (MPD) 2021 may hold the key to their prob­lems. It has a pro­vi­sion for the cluster block approach wherein exist­ing plot own­ers can pool in their indi­vidual prop­er­ties and redevelop them into apart­ments with bet­ter amen­it­ies and greater FAR.
Both the Sethis and the Mehtas can per­haps think of unlock­ing the “hid­den wealth“ and milk their res­id­en­tial assets adequately by mak­ing optimal use of the redevel­op­ment guidelines as men­tioned in the MPD.

For the unini­ti­ated, the MPD has pro­vi­sions to encour­age redevel­op­ment through private par­ti­cip­a­tion –to redevelop either single units or through amal­gam­a­tion. It also calls for vol­un­tary par­ti­cip­at­ive devel­op­ment in the rural areas. The cluster block approach allows exist­ing plot own­ers to pool in their prop­er­ties to arrive at the magic num­ber of 3000 sq m, the min­imum require­ment as far as the size of the plot is con­cerned. Like­wise, for tap­ping into the land in the vil­lages, unau­thor­ised colon­ies and reset­tle­ment colon­ies, the MPD envis­ages a policy for 2000 sq m.

Ajay Dabas of Certes Realty avers, “not only is there an oblig­a­tion to deliver a bet­ter qual­ity of life to the exist­ing colon­ies and vil­lages, the land assets here can deliver the much-needed afford­able homes to Delhi.“ This can be reor­gan­ised so as to provide a min­imum 30 per cent area as com­mon green/soft park­ing besides cir­cu­la­tion areas and com­mon facil­it­ies, the MPD says.

The Mas­ter Plan also seeks to incentiv­ise the redevel­op­ment pro­cess. “To incentiv­ise and redevelop, a max­imum over­all FAR of 50 per cent over and above the exist­ing per­miss­ible FAR on indi­vidual plots will be allowed ­ sub­ject to a max­imum of 400. Higher FAR shall not be per­miss­ible in redevel­op­ment of Luty­ens bun­ga­low zone, Civil Lines bun­ga­lows areas and monu­ment reg­u­lated zone,“ it says.

Ruchika Bhard­waj of Delhimasterplan.com urges a visit to the recently noti­fied plan of Zone ‘N’, which gives details of the size, mag­nitude and intent of the MPD redevel­op­ment oppor­tun­ity. She adds that “the bene­fi­ciary would be the end-user who would get products at the ideal price points, while the developer would bene­fit from faster cash flows. The land owner derives cap­ital appre­ci­ation of his land assets.“ Over­all, a win-win situ­ation for all.

As per the scheme, redevel­op­ment and renewal is to be iden­ti­fied on the basis of the pres­ence of phys­ical fea­tures such as the Metro, roads, drains, high-tension lines and con­trol zones such as monu­ments and her­it­age areas. In short, this means that there should be adequate pro­vi­sion of infra­struc­ture and the area to be redeveloped should not be loc­ated close to a her­it­age site.

What this trans­lates to is that if four fam­il­ies together have 3000 sq m for redevel­op­ment of their plots into multi-storey apart­ments with bet­ter amen­it­ies, they will be per­mit­ted 50 per cent extra FAR. So, if the cur­rent FAR is 1.2, they may be allowed 1.8 under the new norms. Height will vary accord­ing to the area where redevel­op­ment takes place.

As per the Mas­ter Plan, the government’s redevel­op­ment efforts are tar­geted at unau­thor­ised, reset­tle­ment and rehab­il­it­a­tion colon­ies but are more likely to hap­pen in areas where large con­tigu­ous plots are avail­able, places which may allow for easy aggreg­a­tion of 3000 sq m land parcels. .

Accord­ing to A K Jain, former DDA Plan­ning Com­mis­sioner, this incentiv­ised redevel­op­ment scheme is applic­able for unau­thor­ised colon­ies, preinde­pend­ence colon­ies, rehab­il­it­a­tion colon­ies and even reset­tle­ment colon­ies such as Kid­wai Nagar, Patel Nagar etc. Redevel­op­ment will gen­er­ate about 40 per cent hous­ing sup­ply, which is 10 lakh dwell­ing units.

“While the government’s inten­tions may have been focused on a dif­fer­ent area, redevel­op­ment is likely to hap­pen in areas where lar­ger con­tigu­ous plots are avail­able, such as Vas­ant Vihar, Friends Colony, Jorbagh etc. In areas estab­lished after par­ti­tion, where 200 – 300 sq m plots are avail­able, it may be dif­fi­cult to col­lect 10 – 12 plots,“ points out Anckur Srivasttava, chair­man, Gen­Real Prop­erty Advisers Private Limited.

The Mas­ter Plan encour­ages redevel­op­ment and redens­i­fic­a­tion due to the ever increas­ing pop­u­la­tion in Delhi. It is estim­ated that there are more than 60,000 fam­il­ies migrat­ing to Delhi every year, thereby put­ting pres­sure on cre­at­ing more homes. The dens­ity of people is low in some areas and more in oth­ers. For example, in Kishangarh and Chat­tarpur, there may be 10 people for 2.5 acres while in Uttam Nagar and Najafgarh, there may be 10,000 people in the same area Also, this may not be an easy task. A lot of work will have to be done for approvals and not every­body will be able to pull it off. Its suc­cess will depend on not only con­sol­id­a­tion abil­it­ies but also provid­ing adequate infrastructure.

“It’s not enough for five people to apply for a col­lect­ive license by pool­ing their assets. The intent behind the redevel­op­ment scheme and incent­ives offered therein is to be able to enhance the usage of Delhi’s developed areas without cre­at­ing or com­prom­ising on their infra­struc­ture avail­ab­il­ity,“ Jain says.

Besides, the redevel­op­ment pro­jects that one may have seen in the exist­ing areas are not incentiv­ised redevel­op­ment. It is redevel­op­ment of sorts where local build­ers have reused the plot and built low-rise apart­ments under the same FSI.

In their case, con­sol­id­a­tion of plots may or may not be involved. Under the new Mas­ter Plan, one will end up get­ting 50 per cent addi­tional FAR and some com­mer­cial and com­munity usage as incent­ives for redevel­op­ment.
Effect on prices Such redevel­op­ment may add more sup­ply in the main city and have a huge impact on pri­cing in the NCR. It may lead to sta­bil­isa­tion and even cor­rec­tion in res­id­en­tial prices in the NCR, points out Amit Kaicker of inter­na­tional realty con­sult­ants Jones Lang La Salle Meghraj (JLLM).
The chal­lenge While on paper the MPD stip­u­lates a pos­sib­il­ity of redevel­op­ment, the oper­a­tional mod­al­it­ies have no pre­ced­ent. How the pro­cess flows is a bit of a grey area.
While an aca­demic frame­work exists, the prac­tical imple­ment­a­tion needs hand-holding by civic author­it­ies to be able to achieve the desired out­come as envi­sioned in the MPD.
The way for­ward If imple­men­ted well, redevel­op­ment could lead to a situ­ation wherein private coöper­at­ive hous­ing soci­et­ies could get together to redevelop their flats.
These soci­et­ies could end up get­ting brand new amen­it­ies at abso­lutely no cost, the extra apart­ments cre­ated could be used to pay for the redevel­op­ment.
This is already hap­pen­ing in Mum­bai where build­ers are find­ing it cheaper to raze old build­ings and con­struct new units. Besides, that is cheaper than buy­ing new land from the government.

Accord­ing to Amit Bhatt, a town plan­ner, many coun­tries have FAR in double digits. Delhi’s FAR has all along been seen to be project-oriented. One needs to have a long-term vis­ion of how one is going to accom­mod­ate the future urban mass and that approach is dif­fer­ent from the cur­rent pro­ject approach being followed.

Hong Kong, for instance, fol­lows what is known as the Value Cap­ture Pro­pos­i­tion, as per which some land par­cels along the metro are sold when prices go up after the metro is functional.

“Money recovered from the sale of these plots helps in fund­ing the entire metro con­struc­tion and there is no sub­sidy bur­den,“ points out Bhatt.

“If sup­ply has to fol­low demand, the Delhi redevel­op­ment model envis­aged under the MPD is the way to go,“ adds Bhardwaj.

Read art­icle: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HD/2010/07/17/ArticleHtmls/Hidden-potential-17072010221006.shtml?Mode=1

 

A high-rise address
Source: Hindus­tan Times
Dated: 10^th July 10

Multistor­ied build­ings with about 1500 units or 3.41 mil­lion sq ft of sup­ply are expec­ted to come up in Delhi by end-2011, impact­ing their respect­ive loc­al­it­ies favour­ably.
Vandana Ram­nani finds out more

San­geeta Kumar’s exten­ded fam­ily lives in a three­floor house in the Patel Nagar area,plans for ‘By invit­a­tion only’ bun­ga­lows on a three-acre plot in Cent­ral Delhi. They expect these to be priced over Rs 125 crore each. As per the Mas­ter Plan 2021 norms, there is a pro­vi­sion for con­struct­ing town­ships in Delhi, details of which will be out by the next fort­night. The new guidelines will look at the emer­gence of new formats in Delhi such as town­ships spread over 50 to 52 acres, mix of plot­ted and group hous­ing in plots of 25 odd acres, group hous­ing of 10 – 17 acres etc. These will all have gated com­munit­ies, sim­ilar to what one sees in Noida and Gur­gaon. A lot of mixed­use devel­op­ment –hitherto a rar­ity in Delhi –is expec­ted to come up in the next five years.

“The MPD 2021 visu­al­ises a paradigm shift in not just cre­ation of sup­ply, but also in improv­ing the qual­ity of life through bet­ter products and phys­ical and social infra­struc­ture,“ says Ruchika Bhard­waj, an ana­lyst with the portal delhi-masterplan.com.

How­ever, the sup­ply cre­ated by these pro­jects will not be excess­ive, nor will it have a sig­ni­fic­ant impact on the demand-supply situ­ation.
“What may seem valu­able sup­ply may not even make a dent in the lat­ent demand that exists in Delhi. These con­struc­tions might hardly bring in about 10 – 15 per cent sup­ply,“ points out Anckur Srivasttava, chair­man, Gen­Real Prop­erty Advisers Private Lim­ited.
The buy­ers Demand for these premium units is going to come from cor­por­ates as money is not a con­straint for them. Sig­ni­fic­ant absorp­tion may hap­pen from joint fam­il­ies split­ting up to go nuc­lear. There is an exist­ing local cap­tive demand on account of expan­sion of fam­il­ies and urb­an­isa­tion. So, these prop­er­ties will always find takers.

“The pro­posed pri­cing and deliv­ery timelines of these new products would be extremely crit­ical in determ­in­ing their off­take, since these are end user-driven sales, not invest­ment products. Else, they would con­tinue facing the chal­lenge from emer­ging invent­ory of products from the redeveloped plots,“ points out Bhardwaj.

Besides, these will be ‘value for money’ res­id­en­tial apart­ments as one will end up pay­ing for a good loc­a­tion and amen­it­ies that one may not have access to if one is liv­ing in plot­ted hous­ing. People would be will­ing to pay for these facil­it­ies as units offer­ing them are cur­rently lim­ited in number.

Accord­ing to Srivasttava, these are not “me too“ products. Just as in Noida and Gur­gaon, there is an attempt to cre­ate unique res­id­en­tial offer­ings, these apart­ments in Delhi offer a great loc­a­tion pay­off and give the con­sumer “the best of both worlds.“ Also, com­pared to a plot in Delhi that has been redeveloped, these new hous­ing products move “fast“ and are easy to liquid­ate. Though buy­ers are spend­ing more than Rs 4 crore to pur­chase redeveloped units, they are still facing prob­lems relat­ing to park­ing and secur­ity. The new devel­op­ments are designed as organ­ised units offer­ing a neigh­bour­hood envir­on­ment and a life­style, points out Anoj Tewa­tia of Design Forum Inter­na­tional architects.

Also, it may be dif­fi­cult to get a com­ple­tion cer­ti­fic­ate for a tra­di­tional floor but for a new devel­op­ment of this nature by a builder of repute, prop­erty is cent per cent legal.
The price bene­fit There is also the addi­tional bene­fit of price. These prop­er­ties will cer­tainly see a premium com­pared to plots that have been redeveloped as floors, the buy­ers of which have to apply for sep­ar­ate club mem­ber­ship, provide for their own secur­ity and power. They also don’t have access to com­mon areas.

Such hous­ing products will go a long way in chan­ging the char­ac­ter of a par­tic­u­lar area where they come up. Once offered in pub­lic domain, these offer­ings will find ready takers because these are done up aes­thet­ic­ally and provide for mod­ern amen­it­ies. How­ever, once more sup­ply is avail­able in Delhi fol­low­ing imple­ment­a­tion of the new Mas­ter Plan guidelines, the nov­elty factor may wear off.

Going for­ward, Delhi as an invest­ment des­tin­a­tion is a very excit­ing city. But a word of cau­tion though  appre­ci­ation will only be 5 – 10 per cent for bet­ter qual­ity products in new areas released under the Mas­ter Plan.

“While some private devel­op­ments in Delhi, which are cent­ral and where land sup­ply is scarce will con­tinue to see appre­ci­ation over the mid-term, private devel­op­ments in the exist­ing urban areas of Delhi will face ser­i­ous com­pet­i­tion from areas which have been brought under the urban fold as per the Mas­ter Plan. Thus, for people cre­at­ing products close to the fringes of the cap­ital, pri­cing will be a big chal­lenge,“ adds Srivasttava.

Read art­icle:  http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HD/2010/07/10/ArticleHtmls/A-high-rise-address-10072010221004.shtml?Mode=1