Zoom Into The Future Of Your City with 'City Master Plan'

What is most possibly your best strength when you are out there in the property market, looking for your dream home? Information, we say. Information empowers you to make the best decisions about property in a market that's largely opaque. Much of the relevant information might be in public domain but complications happen when you have to use multiple sources to access that information.

Imagine a scenario: You are looking for a great property somewhere in Noida, an emerging investment and residential hub in the National Capital Region of Delhi, and while you have several projects to choose from, you don't really know how the city is going to develop in the next ten years. Investments and their returns hinge on future possibilities of cities. Remember every time your local real estate agent tells you about the proposed Metro line next to the property you are checking out. How do you find out if that is actually true, that your future home will be just minutes' walk from the Metro station or if the project site falls bang on the proposed rail route? How to find out if you are making the cheapest deal and if you are, why is the project cheaper than other projects in the same area? Is it because the proposed project is right next to a drain, or an eco-sensitive zone? There might be facts that your local real estate agent may not tell you. But now, there is a way to find out yourself.

With PropTiger.com's new feature, City Master Plan, you can view a city's master plan on its interactive map. The feature allows home buyers to view the current map along with a representation of proposed infrastructure in a city. The Master Plan shows current and proposed land usage patterns, major roads, highways, rail roads, metros, rivers, drains and canals.

This feature is a significant technological advancement as it merges master plans of cities with geographical maps and project plans listed on the site. The master plans, gathered from civic authorities, allow home buyers access to information such as land usage (proposed and current), major roads, linkages, highway development plans, railways, metros, rivers, drains and canals.

Infographic by Sandeep Bhatnagar. 

Home buyers can these days view the location of a project, directions to places in and around the city through satellite/aerial imagery on Google Maps. An average home buyer, however, still is not sure of the investment potential of a location or what the future holds for the neighborhood in terms of surrounding infrastructure. Without knowing much about the prospective infrastructural growth of a city, it is difficult to take an informed decision while buying a home. Using Master Plan, you can even find out how far a fly-over or a highway is going to be built from residential projects that interest them.

Here is How You Can Use The City Master Plan:

To view future prospects of a locality on the map, visit the map of a city, select the locality, and then choose any of the following on the Master Plan: Land Usage, Rails and Metros, Roads and Highways, or Drains and Electric. By choosing Rails and Metros, for instance, you can view the current and proposed railroads and metro lines in an area. By choosing Land Usage, you can see whether land usage is agricultural, Industry/SEZ, Institutional/Facility or Residential and the proposed changes. By choosing drains and electric, you can view the existing and proposed drains and canals and the high tension lines in a locality.

Infographic by Sandeep Bhatnagar. 

On the interactive map, you can also view the projects in the locality ranked according to their popularity, safety and livability scores, builder price, price appreciation and building specifications. While viewing projects, you can also sort projects according to the number of bedrooms, budget, availability and project completion status.

Presently, you can view the Master Plan for 3 cities on the interactive map on the website - Noida, Bangalore and Pune. But, it will soon be available in other Indian cities where PropTiger.com lists projects.

Infographic by Sandeep Bhatnagar. 

So, get started here.

Why It Matters

The value of your property is deeply linked to the commercial and governmental development that is likely to happen near it. In fact, the single biggest factor, which influences the value of your home, is the future prospects of land value in the locality. Factors like upcoming roads and highways, railway and metro lines and the shifts in patterns of land usage in the neighborhood influences influence price appreciation. City development authorities do make town planning documents and master plans available. But, they are very difficult to access. There is huge asymmetry of information. So far, no Indian real estate portal has attempted to bridge this information gap by analyzing town planning documents and master plans, making relevant information easily accessible to home buyers.

The City Master Plan feature cuts through the clutter of information available in the real estate market and allows you to view the current map along with a representation of proposed infrastructure in a city duly approved by its civic authorities.

This is a big move towards transparency in real estate and we are celebrating the fact that this empowers you - the average home buyer - who should matter above everything else.