The Hindu Business Line : RICS releases wish-list

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors hopes the Finance Ministry will consider hiking the housing loan interest deduction limit and bringing down home loan interest rates in the coming Budget.

A press release from RICS quoting its Managing Director and Country Head, Mr Sachin Sandhir, says RICS believes that the Ministry of Finance will consider the proposals submitted by the Housing Ministry and increase the housing loan interest deduction limit to Rs 2.5 lakh or Rs 3 lakh a year along with lowering interest rates to 7.5 per cent for loans in the range of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 30 lakh.

Given the President of India’s ambition of making India slum free in five years, it would be imperative to provide fiscal concessions for building low-cost houses.

A dedicated fund for affordable housing and reintroduction of concessions under Section 80IB (10) of the Income-Tax Act, which would encourage construction of small residential units at affordable prices, are some of its expectations.

This provision would allow deduction at 100 per cent of the profits from a housing project that fulfils special conditions such as minimum plot area of one acre and maximum built-up area of 1,000 sq.ft for Delhi or Mumbai and 1,500 sq.ft for other places.

Waiver or reduction in stamp duty, value added taxes and other government taxes for economically weaker sections (EWS), lower income group (LIG) housing and restoration of tax holidays for low-cost housing projects would also support this segment.

As the industry’s wish-list is multi-fold, other announcements likely to bring joy to the sector are: further relaxation of ECB and FDI norms; rationalisation of stamp duty and registration charges; confirmation on abolition of service tax on renting immovable property already announced by the high court; clarity on extension of tax waiver for STPI units; extension of tax holiday under Section 80-IA (4)(iii) for developers who build industrial parks, which in turn would boost the otherwise impacted IT industry

RICS hopes that levy of fresh taxes which could adversely impact the sector are avoided.

99Acres.com spruces up Web site

99Acres.com, the property portal, has revamped its site to improve its usability and help online visitors more easily access property-related information, according to a press release.

The release said property search on the Internet has seen exponential growth. The revamp was done after a rigorous study of user behaviour patterns and understanding critical features in property search.

With a focus on ‘Click Less, Get More’, 99Acres.com revamped the homepage and search pages on the site. Users would now need to ‘scroll and click’ lesser with new features like mouse-over, better refine options, and ‘City Buzz’ section. With more information provided upfront, users can reduce by half the time invested in short-listing.

The main actions of the site have been built into layers to reduce the number of pages/clicks in the user’s flow, the detailed city pages helps easy access to information on a city’s projects, properties, brokers and dealers all at one place.

The Web site enables easy access to a huge property bank for netizens and allows for direct connect with brokers/builders in cities in urban and remote parts of India. With properties of almost 8,000 builders, 60,000 brokers and one lakh individuals, the portal lists over three lakh properties at any time. The Web site has a registered database of three lakh users.

RE/MAX in expansion mode

RE/MAX India, an international real estate franchising network plans to expand into Gujarat. A press release from the company says, after the recent entry into Chennai, the Ahmedabad venture will be another opportunity to set a strong footprint in the Indian real estate market. RE/MAX India is on its way towards organising and bringing professionalism in this unorganised but compelling market.

RE/MAX India has entered this market to meet the potential available and make real estate matters transparent, in order to reduce risk and ensure certainty.

Mr Samir Chopra, Chairman & Managing Director, RE/MAX India, said in the release that “the biggest impending concern of the real estate sector is the lack of accurate statistics and transparency, and the need of the hour is to place trust amongst investors and buyers. We at RE/MAX India are really looking forward to building great long-term partnerships in the city and help it maximise its growth potential.”

It offers a one-stop solution to all the realty requirements of its customers worldwide, and provides access to 74 nations in which the company is operational.

RE/MAX was founded in 1973 with a single office in Denver, Colorado. It is now a global network of more than 7,000 offices with one lakh sales associates.

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