Compelling need for real estate regulator: Parekh

Compelling need for real estate regulator: Parekh
Business Standard, August 10, 2009, Page 6

Press Trust Of India / Mumbai

Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) chairman Deepak Parekh has said there is a compelling need to have real estate regulators at state level to deal with issues concerning the housing sector.

“There is a compelling need for state level real estate regulators,” Parekh said in an annual report of the company sent to shareholders.

Discussing various aspects of real estate, he added, “It would be a missed opportunity if the government were not able to lay out an institutional framework for a real estate regulator”.

According to Parekh, regulators’ role would be to monitor the affordable housing agenda, promote real estate reforms, ensure transparency especially by mandating that flats be sold only on carpet area and act as a platform to protect buyers from real estate fraud.

Referring to the affordable housing, he observed that affordable housing is not about box-sized , budget homes in far-flung places where there is no connectivity to work places and little surrounding infrastructure.

“Affordable housing has to be able to cut across all income segments and has to make economic sense in terms of proximity to work place”, Parekh added.

About challenges being faced in rural housing, he said challenges of rural housing are vastly different from urban housing and key reform like permitting the mortgage of agricultural land for residential purpose was needed.

Parekh also criticised the tendency of state housing boards to make profits by selling lands.

He said,”many housing boards have shifted their focus to merely selling land for profit and sitting on cash surpluses. Such profits should be mandatorily ring fenced and deployed only for affordable housing”.