Tag: Apartments in India

All land-related info of Bengal will now be a click away

Banglar Bhumi, a portal on land records of West Bengal, is ready to provide all land related information to people, particularly entrepreneurs, sources in the Land and Land Reforms department said.

The land have been divided into various zones like agricultural zone, industrial zone and tourism zone for easy spotting of target lands.

“The basic idea behind marking the zones is that industrial and other big projects of the state government and the Centre will be located in the appropriate zones without disturbing food security in the state,” sources said.

The block-wise land use maps show single, double and multi crops land, dry and barren land, forest land, metal roads, national highway, state highway, railway network, industrial area, area under infrastructural development and water bodies etc.

“This will help the entrepreneurs intending to set up industries know the actual infrastructure available at the proposed sites,” sources said.

However, the concept of zoning in block-wise maps of the districts was introduced in May 2011 to identify agricultural zone, industrial zone and tourism zone, townships and wetlands.

The block-wise land use maps of five districts — West Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia, Burdwan and Birbhum — have been prepared and formally published in March 2010.

Source: The Indian Express

Land buying tips for real estate investors

KOLKATA: Check the land deed twice before you buy a plot from a broker. Chances are that the deed is fake, a clone of the original, like counterfeit notes. Land deed cloning is the Ponzi firm’s latest gift to fraudulent trade in the state.

TOI has learnt that Ponzi firm owners had started the fraud with a section of Bank and land registration officials. They fake signatures and seal of the land registration authorities, thus selling the same plot to many buyers. Hundreds of complaints have poured into the Shyamal Sen commission’s office set up to probe the Saradha muddle, where many have lodged co plaints against fake land deeds, apart from asking for a refund of money. Such fake dealings in the way of multiple mortgages have also added to the bad assets of banks.

“Most of the cases involving fake or cloned documents in land deals have been reported from districts like South and North 24-Parganas and Nadia,” said Dipankar Mukherjee, secretary of the All India Bank officers’ Confederation (West Bengal state unit).

Alarmed with the situation, the state government had started to confiscate land lying with the suspicious companies. The government has started to seize land of companies that have more than 24 acre in possession.

“The trend of duping banks by forging land deeds was high in the middle of the past decade. City police have busted several rackets where fraudsters had managed to get bank loans with forged documents, and in some cases loans were obtained from different banks showing the same land or property. In several cases, probe unearthed a nexus between the fraudsters and a section of bank employees. But now, after busting several rackets, we have managed to buck the trend,” said Pallav Kanti Ghosh, joint CP (Crime), Kolkata Police.

According to bank sources, the fraudsters close land documents and sell the same piece of land to several people. “It is difficult to make out the fake from the original as those are done very meticulously. They even copy stamp of the registering authorities and signature on the original,” said a bank official.

T R Chawla, executive director of Allahabad Bank, said most of the frauds that are reported are done by individuals. “We have seen cases where documents were faked but mostly these are done by individuals, rather than any corporate entity,” he said.

Although the number of land frauds has come down after the banks in the state have started using Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest (CERSAI), the fraudsters have taken innovative routes to dupe people. “There is a mechanism that allows us to search if that land had already been mortgaged with any bank. But if that land is already sold to an individual and has no mortgage records, it is difficult to track it down,” Mukherjee said.

According to Deepak Narang, executive director of United Bank of India, “We have been able to contain such frauds after the banks have started using certified copies of land deeds and using CERSAI extensively.

Source: The Times of India

India realty space to see $4-5 billion foreign inflows in 2 years

India’s realty sector is set for robust inflows of USD 4-5 billion from overseas investors in the next couple of years, with Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai emerging as the favourites, global real estate consultancy giant Jones Lang LaSalle has said.

“The early foreign investors in India, who came in around 2006-07, did not have very good experience, partly because of their inexperience in doing business in India and partly because of global financial crisis,” JLL Asia Pacific CEO Alastair Hughes said here.

“However, foreign investors are now looking with a renewed interest at India, given its still robust economic growth rate as that bodes well for good returns to their investments,” Hughes told PTI in an interview here.

Hughes, who was here to participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, said foreign fund inflows were expected to pick up in the Indian realty sector going forward.

He added: “They (investors) are now looking much more closely at India to put in their funds into Indian real estate sector. They had come in between 2006-2007 and first half of 2008, but they completely went away in 2009 and have been mostly away since then.

“The overseas investors are now looking to come back and what they are looking for right now is good partners in India, because it is a difficult place to do real estate business because of various reasons.”

Right now, many Indian developers and fund managers are seeking to get international money and that is much more likely to come in, Hughes said, adding that there is more international money today waiting to be invested in India than any of the last five years.

Overseas investors have invested USD 14 billion into the Indian real estate sector over the period from 2006 to 2012. In the last two years, foreign investment into Indian real estate has been around USD 1.2 billion per annum.

Around half of all transactions were invested in residential property, a quarter in the offices sector and the remaining quarter was split among the other sectors. Regionally, half these investment come from US with rest coming from the Middle East, Singapore, the UK, Hong Kong and Germany, Hughes said.

Terming the next two years as much more promising, Hughes said that 2013 and 2014 will have a total of USD 4-5 billion come into the sector, mainly to buy income yielding SEZ assets at a capitalisation rate of 10.75 per cent.

“We expect interest from global and US investors to maintain. Favourite location foreigners will be Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai,” he added.

Globally, Hughes said, there was a big boom in 2007 and then a big bust in 2008 for the realty sector, while there has been a gradual recovery since the end of 2009.

New Projects in Kolkata
Best Properties to Live in Kolkata. Great Location to Invest in More Kolkata Properties.
Godrej Prakriti Kolkata
Bookings Open – 2/3 BHK BT Road Starting 25 Lac No EMI for 24 mnths.

As per a report released by JLL here at Davos, global investment capital is leaning towards real estate and the commercial real estate direct investment volume is expected to more than double to USD 1 trillion by 2030 and Asia Pacific region is leading the investment growth since crisis.

Hughes said investments into Asia Pacific commercial real estate market fell by around 10 per cent in 2012, from USD 98 billion to about USD 92 billion.

“That was because of a sense of caution prevailing in different countries. But now we are seeing a change in the sentiments.

“One of the reasons for that is people looking to divert their investments from bonds to equities and other asset classes and that include real estate. Therefore more money is coming to real estate and a bigger proportion of that we see coming to Asia Pacific,” he added.

Hughes further said: “We believe that the volume of real estate investment deals would go up in 2013 to something close to USD 105 billion, from USD 92 billion last year.

“This would make 2013 the biggest investment year for real estate market since the global financial crisis hit the world, although it would still be below USD 120 billion figure recorded by Asia Pacific in 2007. We are not back to where we were in 2007, but the scenario is getting better and closer to that level.”

Hughes said that 2012 was very bad for the Indian real estate sector, as there were difficult market conditions and India was probably the only country in the world where conditions were even worse than 2009.

Going forward, he said, the growth in Indian office sector would depend on the economic growth.

In the retail sector, a very high growth is expected with the entry of foreign retailers, as they would need large space to set up shop in the country and most of the current developments are not designed for the international retailers.

Besides, manufacturing and industrial sector would also benefit a lot as these companies would need to set up logistics and other facilities.

Hughes said that robust activities are expected in residential space also.

Source: The Economic Times

Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune positioned top, by adding New Homes in 2012

At a time when the real-estate sector across the country is witnessing a slowdown, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune recorded significant growth in new residential units, in 2012.

According to study released by real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield, the total new units launched across eight cities went down by approximately 16 per cent (to 162,000 units) in 2012 when compared to 2011.

Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata were the exceptions with 72 per cent, 34 per cent and 19 per cent increase.

The study was carried out across eight cities — Delhi & NCR, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, and Kolkata.

While Bangalore saw the highest decline of nearly 50 per cent (16,543 units), Mumbai witnessed the maximum growth of 72 per cent (22,423 units).

Of the total number of units launched, majority were in the mid-end segment, which comprised approximately 83 per cent of the total launches.

According to the report, a total of 8,900 units were launched in Kolkata in 2012.

Nearly, 62 per cent of these units were in the mid-end segment (5,535 units) and priced between Rs 36 lakh and Rs 60 lakh. This was followed by the high-end segment, priced upwards Rs 60 lakh, which accounted for another 38 per cent of the launches.

On a year-on-year basis, supply of mid-level homes increased by 26 per cent to 5,535 (from 4,372). Similarly, high-end home launches too increased to 3,360 units – 17 per cent up from the 2,863 units launched in 2011.

Interestingly, supply of luxury homes dipped drastically in 2012. The number of units launched dipped from 280 (2011) to just 23 (2012) — a near 92 per cent fall.

“Cash-strapped developers were not willing to take up projects that may fall short in interest from end users, thereby keeping their risk exposure minimum,” Sanjay Dutt, Executive Managing Director, South Asia, Cushman & Wakefield says.

According to the report, the short term outlook of the city suggests a cautious approach by end-users in the wake of high home loan rates coupled with inflation.

Harsh Patodia, President (Bengal), Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI), pointed out that over the last 18 to 24 months, launches in Kolkata were much lower than in other cities.

Source: The Hindu Business Line