Reaction on Union Budget 2017-18 by Real Estate Developers

According to Mr.Prashant Tiwari, Chairman, Prateek Group: "Finance Minister announced that the project will now be sold on the basis of carpet areas that will help the buyers know the exact area that they are getting. Focus of the budget is on infrastructure development including airports and roads, this will help in healthy growth of real estate sector also. Announcements like new FDI policy under consideration and tax relief on unsold stock as liability to pay capital gains will arise only in the year a project is completed will give boost to the sector".

According to Mr. Gaurav Gupta, Director, SG Estates Ltd. "Good Budget for Real Estate perspective because of complete clarity on affordable housing. The criteria for low cost / affordable housing has been changed from built-up area of 30 / 60 sq mtrs to carpet area of 30/60 sq mtrs, thus making the low cost – affordable housing segment more lucrative for us and also making the segment more attractive for the buyers. With the change in criteria from built-up area to carpet area, the purchasers get more spacious homes and the builder is able to market the property to a larger segment of buyers. Also areas like Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida etc will now be able to get incentives of the scheme by making houses upto carpet area 60 sq.meter (650 sq.ft) as against 30 sq.meter earlier. Infrastructure status has been granted to affordable housing thus ensuring more liquidity for the real estate and access to funds at lower costs. This will motivate more builders to develop affordable housing units which is the need of the country. Project completion time under affordable housing scheme increased to 5 years as against 3 years earlier, thus making it more practical. Tax arising on unsold inventory given some breather by making it applicable post 1 year of completion. However, the FM did not touch upon increasing the tax exemption limits on housing loans or single window clearance or GST rules regarding real estate sector. We hope these things will be touched later".?

According to Mr. Akshay Taneja, MD, TDI Infratech Ltd. "We welcome the infrastructure status being given to the affordable housing sector, it will help achieve the target set to cater to this most important segment, which is the need of the hour. We will now see more of such projects being announced in the recent future. With this announcement, the banks will now lend more to projects in the affordable housing segment. Another budget announcement that will help the real estate market is the announcement of focus on making airports in tier II cities through PPP model. This announcement will lead to more housing and real estate projects come up in the vicinity of the airports in these cities".??