The Hindu Business Line : Rating builders: Few takers for NHB plan

Chennai, June 10 National Housing Bank, in its efforts to regulate the development of housing, has mooted a system of rating for builders and grading of the property built by them—but there has been poor response for it.

According to Mr S. Sridhar, Chairman, NHB, the methodology for rating and grading had been evolved by the regulator-refinancer, but such rating/grading is neither mandatory nor do they yield tangible benefits to those who opt for it.

Mr Sridhar, in a conversation with Business Line, observed that unless the rating is made mandatory, it would be difficult to get the system in use. Ultimately, the consumers would benefit , but perhaps it is an idea whose time has is yet to come.

Positive feedback

NHB has three roles—regulation, development and refinancing. As part of its efforts in developing a housing industry, the bank has brought out a ‘residential property index’ giving property-price data for fifteen cities for the last many years upto 2005.

“The feedback for the pilot project was very positive,” Mr Sridhar said, adding that the bank now wants to extend it further to cover all the cities in India with a population of over 10 lakh. “In two years, all major cities will be covered,” he said.

The index will act as a reference for consumers when the proceed to buy property, but more importantly, it will be an instrument for banks to value property mortgaged with them.

Mr Sridhar said that he would like to see ‘property valuation’ to evolve as a discipline, on the lines of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, yielding a crop of professional property valuers.

NHB is also working towards creating a National Mortgage Repository, which will give information about all details relating to a piece of property, including loans raised on them. “We want to do it electronically and link up the repository to the land records of the various state governments,” he said.

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