Turning around Indias housing market: India Inc Interview

Aditya Javdekar is the CEO of Vilas Javdekar Developers, a Pune-based firm focused on sustainable housing and real estate solutions. He gives his insights into what the recently passed Real Estate Bill means for the Indian property market. What would you classify as the highlights of the Real Estate Bill The highlights are legal title and approval disclosures; committed possession time; five- year warrantee; no misleading advertisements; commitment by developers will be a legal document; brokers will be registered property dealers; interest penalty for developers who delay possession; and several other highlights that will make the real estate industry more responsible and accountable to the consumer. Is it friendly towards developers like yourself Yes, the bill is friendly because it advocates ethical business practises and financial prudence in order to ensure good quality product delivered in time to the consumer. Would it help instil buyer confidence in the market Yes, buyers and well-meaning developers have welcomed this bill as it will introduce transparency and fly-by-night operators will be forced to exit the business. This will have a short term impact of high input costs to developers and buyers may feel the shortage of good homes, but eventually, once the system settles down, the buyers/investors in real estate will benefit tremendously. Also, approval authorities (like municipal-corporation and government departments that issue permission to build will also have to be accountable for gross delays in issuing building permits and occupancy certificates (OC). Once permits and completion/OC issuance process is streamlined and "ease of doing business" is established, reputed and professional real estate developers will have tremendous demand in a country which has a shortage of over 20 million homes. What more could/needs to be done to stabilise the sector Administrative reforms such as deemed permissions, self-attestation for green clearance, industry status for real estate, and infrastructure banking interest rates will help in this transition and ensure prices do not rise steeply due to eminent supply shortage. How important is the environment-friendly approach to your business model Being environment friendly is just not enough, we believe that every community needs to have a sense of collective pride of their home, their society, their neighbourhood and their city. Environment friendly construction needs to be second-nature for real estate developers as it makes the building operating system more efficient (both on resources and cost) but we believe that once we have set the environment infrastructure properly, we also need to monitor the happiness index of the project. If we achieve that, we not only increase customer experience tremendously, but we also generate tremendous value to all stake holders of the project and community. I can summarise our firm's ethos it in one line "We love what we do". Every VJ team member is absolutely thrilled to work each day and is able to generate tremendous positivity in her work. This leads to an output that has higher passion, resolve and will power to do the best.