Budget 2015: Realtors are looking for sops and lower interest rates for home buyers
Union Budget 2015-16
It is the demand of real estate developers in upcoming Budget to revive the tax structures and lower interest rates for the home buyers as home is there ultimate need. Apart from to seek for better infrastructure status for housing, Getamber Anand, the Elected President of CREDAI stated in real estate press conference organized by RICS that “The government should provide some fiscal incentives to the real estate developers to build affordable housing.” NAREDCO Chairman Naveen Raheja stated that: “There should be some real stimulus for the affordable home buyers in form of lower interest rates.” The more he added that we wish this budget will provide better infrastructure status to housing if not the entire real estate”. On the same occasion, CBRE South Asia Chairman and Managing Director Anshuman Magazine stated that infrastructure development and low cost funding should be key for the revival of the real estate sector.
CEO Embassy Office Parks, Michael Holland demanded that “Now it’s perfect time when central government should provide some clarification on tax treatment of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), particularly on Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) because we all know that real estate sales are down and it can put the realty market in worst post-global financial crisis. It means that we are at the bottom, it can only go up from here as sales are not happening so this is good opportunity for buyers to buy home”. Commenting on the need to incentivize the affordable housing segment, Sachin Sandhir RICS Global’s Managing Director – Emerging Business & MD – South Asia said: “Despite the inherent fundamentals of the realty market, things have slowed down in recent times and we must introspect as an industry the reasons why this has happened, and address the issues. The core issue of increasing affordability and supply of housing should be addressed.”
In September 2014, SEBI, which is market regulator, had notified that there are few norms for listing of new business trust structure under REITs and they would help to attract more funds in a transparent manner into the realty sector.These norms were notified when Finance Minister, had provided the REITs ‘pass through’ status for the purpose of taxation in the last year’s budget, Vineet Relia, MD of SARE Homes stated that in order to ‘Make housing for all a Reality’ central government should look into relaxation of taxes, and lower interest rates with easy process of financing for the developers and build adequate infrastructure”.
