Expecting a budget with more sops for home buyers

Navin Makhija,
Managing Director,
The Wadhwa Group.

We are hoping that the upcoming budget will emphasize on housing sector. More tax sops and higher relief on the home loan rates will woo the homebuyers and investors to buy property. This can help the sector recover from its liquidity woes to a larger extent.

Timely start & completion of projects has always been a concern, and a single window clearance will help to swiftly execute projects making it a win-win situation for developers and homebuyers. Industry status for the sector and single window clearance for projects has been a long-standing demand which we expect the new Government to address.

We would also like to revive the input tax credit under new GST regime which will help to keep the property prices under control.

While incentives have been provided to boost the affordable housing segment, there needs to be a reduction in the cost of land, development premiums to incentivize developers to build budget homes. Additionally, interest rates on housing loans should be reduced to benefit a broader segment of homebuyers and increase demand. The Government also needs to allocate more funds for Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) which will help them achieve the target of 'Housing for All by 2022'.

Apart from this, we are expecting a more determined infrastructure push from the Government not only in the form of more funds but with strict guidelines on actual infra deployment. This will certainly boost the real estate sector and also generate more jobs that the Government had committed to deploy.

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