Realty News Roundup: M'rasthra To Appoint Regulatory Body For Home Buyers; Rupert Murdoch-led News Corp Raises Stake in PropTiger.com

Realty News Roundup is PropGuide's selection of top stories from the real estate sector.

Top News

The Maharashtra government will soon appoint a regulatory body to safeguard interests of home buyers. The decision has come after the Central government gave a go ahead to the state to frame rules to implement the Regulatory Bill passed by the legislature and approved by the President. In this report in ZeeNews, an official said, “Mumbai's home needs are different from the rest of the country. There was urgent need for a regulator and that our provisions were better than the proposed central law. Our submission has been accepted and we will have our own regulator." 

Rupert Murdoch led News Corp has raised its stake in the Singapore based Elara Technologies Pte, the parent company of real estate portal PropTiger.com. Earlier, News Corp had acquired a 25 per cent stake in Elara in November 2014 for $30 million. This report quotes Raju Narisetti, senior vice president, strategy for News Corp, saying, “We strongly believe the combination of PropTiger.com and Makaan.com is best poised to be the dominant digital real-estate platform in India for years to come." CEO of PropTiger.com, Dhruv Agarwala, said, "News Corp's increased stake is a validation of PropTiger's strategy to win a growing share of the digital real estate market in India through our unique service offerings and an end user experience that is second to none. We continue to leverage and benefit from News Corp's global expertise in real estate markets.”

The PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has asked the union government to allow real estate developers to avail benefits of an external commercial borrowings (ECB) window to fund their low cost home projects till interest rates in India come down. According to this report, the chamber, in a representation to the government, also urged for infrastructure status to be granted for affordable homes as it will facilitate long-term funding through various channels which include ECBs and FDI.

Off the front page

Two reports in The Economic Times and the Financial Express respectively bring a brighter picture of Mumbai. The first report says that India's commercial capital will add around 15 million sq ft or 16% of current office space in the next 18 months. Quoting a global survey by property consultancy JLL, the report says that Mumbai ranks among top five cities that will add the maximum number of office buildings during this period. The second report says that around 500 luxury flats are waiting buyers in Mumbai. According to real estate watchers, each of these spacious apartments costs at least Rs 10 crore, the value of unsold apartments is estimated at close to Rs 50,000 crore.

In a good news to the people of NCR, the Noida authority top brass said that NCR's greenest sector projects are speeding up. Noida authority have reviewed all these projects. This report quotes Noida Authority explaining that sector 150, spread over 600 acre land, will be the greenest sector of NCR. 80 percent of the sector will be green. One of the biggest park in the country is also being developed in the same sector. Apart from that the authority has also planned to develop a Sports city here.

In the South, Real estate developers welcomed the new urban land policy cleared by the Odisha state cabinet. Developers said the new policy would fast-track home and infrastructure projects in the state capital, however, saying that the policy did not address the concern of middle-class home buyers, who make up 60 per cent of the sector. In Kochi, if everything goes well as planned by the district administration, land registration in the city will move online soon. This report says that the administration has already prepared a detailed project report (DPR) for online registration of land and transfer of registry. 

Opinion

Read the full interview of Union law minister DV Sadananda Gowda where he outlines the government's reason to remain optimistic about the land bill. In this interview, the minister asserts that the government will consider the joint panel's views on the land bill.