Wednesday, 11 November 2015

INTEGRATED TOWNSHIPS – Living a peaceful life

Today Indian real estate scenario is witnessing a shift in the way projects nowadays are being designed and developed or to simply say developers desire to construct townships simply because they wish to provide their buyers - affordability with luxury and with all necessary amenities.

Land shortage in developed regions permits only construction of small projects or at the most a mid-sized housing complex comprising a few multi-storied buildings with limited amenities added to. This turns out to be an expensive proposition for a developer as land & construction cost is high, government approvals are difficult to get, hence he prefers not to get involved.

For large integrated townships although large parcel of lands are required, which today are only available on the outskirts of a city, still makes sense for developers to develop because the land cost there is less. Again because of the scale of construction; cost is less, government is in favour of developing such townships and hence permissions also come fast.

Advantages of living in an integrated township.

An Integrated Township can be described as a place which has most of the essential facilities within its boundaries such as schools, hospitals, parks, gyms, shopping centres etc. The most important and best aspect of Integrated Township is its self-sustaining infrastructure; water and waste management, sanitation, business centres, healthcare, good connectivity, basic education facilities and recreation. To understand these points a little further lets elaborate them;

Connectivity: a well-developed road network within the township as well as its connecting to the highway and the nearest railway station is a boon for working class and businessmen equally.

Water management: adequate supply of treated water to meet the everyday requirements of the residents and proper disposal of waste water with recycling assures less dependability on municipal supplies.

Garbage management: collection, disposal, treatment of garbage is a must to maintain hygiene and proper ecological balance in nature, with a dedicated collection of garbage area and disposal systems in place this adds value in townships.

Schools: basic education should be available to the children residing in the township this is one of the norms laid by government, adds further to convenience of residents as they feel their kids are just next to them when still in school.

Playground: open play areas have to be provided in townships as norms these should be provided for the all-round and healthy development of children.

Power supply: though the township will have to depend on public or private power supplier, it generally has a good back-up system for all its common areas, households and essential services like hospitals during power breakdown.

Infrastructure maintenance: not just providing but maintaining good infrastructure for long term is a must and within townships its generally seen that this is well taken care of as cost of maintenance gets divided and is almost negligible for residents.

Healthcare: with a large population of varied age groups residing, it is very important to have healthcare facilities that will cater to all types of medical requirements. This is also one of the norms for integrated township.

Security: another important aspect which is taken care of is providing good and round the clock security within the township.

Entertainment and recreation: A spacious, well-decorated community centre with a club house and a function hall quality cinema or multiplex, popular games and kid entertainment facilities are generally established within the township.

Shopping centres: well stocked stores of groceries, fruits and vegetables, garment stores, electronic goods stores etc. are also a part of the township, this is to meet the everyday requirements of the residents.

There are many more such benefits of being a part of township, these developments are beneficial for developer as it justifies his scale of economy and for customer it’s a place for peaceful life.



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Thursday, 5 November 2015

INDIAN REAL ESTATE – IS ONLINE THE WAY TO GO……

Just went through some articles on this topic (in newspapers and on-line), thought of sharing few facts from what I could understand:

On-line medium is slowly sinking into Indians mindset; they have started purchasing high value items on-line.This medium seems to bea boon for today's consumers who are so tied up in their professional and personal commitments that it’s almost impossible for them to check things by visiting stores or showrooms, hence they prefer to study, compare and even purchase things on-line, be it a book, grocery or high end jewellery and now of course now its extend to real estate.

Let’s compare benefits and drawbacks for on-line purchase of Real estate. Before we do that let’s understand the real estate sector as a commodity in on-line market;

It involves a built product which is not standardized and varies from developer to developer, area to area ….etc. then there are other factors which influence this decision such as the location of property, the neighbourhood profile, the availability of social infrastructure, accessibility via road rail etc. making this further difficult is to evaluate the developer (his market standing and reputation i.e. brand image) also the cost involved here is much more than as compared to simple on-line transactions of an electronic goods purchases and so on.

What felicitates on-line involvement of customer is of course:

  •  It does reduce the hassle of visiting the site office of developer physically and the property can be viewed on-line.
  • With major property portals giving real time statistical data in terms of demand of the area, the prevalent rates there and availability; it gives consumer an opportunity to evaluate the purchase.
  • A developer’s brand image can also be evaluated based on the testimonials available on-line (in other than his website J).


What restricts these decisions not materializing completely on-line is that:
  • We Indians still prefer  the old formats of buying a home which involves visiting a broker, going to the site and experiencing everything first hand and that to in all the projects in short its lack of trust especially when your life savings are involved.
  • There have been incidences especially with NRI customers wherein the company projection on-line was fantastic with no bad publicity at all and later it was realized the developer had changed its name for on-line presence.
  • On-line gateway is what we Indians are not very comfortable. We need an immediate receipt for the payment made with an individual hand sign on their company seal.



 In short if I have to summarize this debate then it seems that the best for the customer is; do on-line research, short-list property but visit these short-listed property before making any transaction.