Good morning, a surgical team from the Jewish Hospital, along with the University of Louisville has performed the world's first Aeson bioprosthetic total artificial heart implantation in a woman.
Back to the matters at hand, proptech is winning hearts even as the real estate sector searches for friends and well wishers. Hoping today's stories make you change your heart towards real estate players.
Here's to an equitable autumn equinox day. Cheers!
Fly-By-Night
They say when an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Residents of global tech hub Bengaluru, refuse to heed such words though.
With Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) housing layouts in short supply and bearing expensive price tags where available, thousands are falling for the promise of affordable plots in illegal layouts.
Are You Serious?
Pretty much. Per this report, there are 6,000 illegal layouts in the Bangalore urban district, with Yelahanka topping the list with 3,285 illegal layouts spread across 3,343 acres.
Bengaluru North is next in line with 900 illegal layouts spread across 1,080 acres, Bengaluru South has 778 illegal layouts across 1,907 acres, followed by Anekal with 501 layouts spread across 643 acres.
BTW, the demand is so high that layouts are even being created in small chunks of lands measuring 10 or 20 Gunthas. [1 Ghunta = 101.17 square meters or 1,089 square feet.]
What's Drawing Them?
Illegal layout watchers think that the 3,285 illegal layouts in Yelahanka have come up near the Bangalore International Airport as there is a demand from people to build houses in close vicinity of the aviation hub.
A senior official quoted to the press, “As getting a plot in BDA layouts is very difficult, many people wanting to own land or build houses are falling for these illegal layouts as the offered cost of the land is relatively cheaper. They are also wooed by fancy ideas like site tours or EMI schemes."
However, only when officials raid such layouts with bulldozers, buyers realise that the plots they have bought are actually illegal.
What Action Is Being Taken?
Fast track investigations are ongoing and notices have already been issued to 1,961 developers in Yelahanka taluk for forming these illegal layouts while FIRs have been filed against 353 people.
Not A Friend In Need
Speak Up. Did you help real estate companies when they were going through a bad time?
Don't start rolling up your shirt sleeves yet. That's the question the Supreme Court has asked Noida development authorities in the due course of an ongoing legal review.
What's The Row?
The apex court was examining a joint plea, filed by Noida and Greater Noida authorities to recall its June 2020 order capping interest rate on delayed payments by real estate developers to about 8%, instead of 15-23%.
Noida authorities realised that after this interest rate revision to ~8%, they would lose around INR 7,500 crore of revenue and urged the court to recall its judgement, or else they would be financially ruined.
The fair weather question up there is what the court asked the Noida authorities in response to the judgement recall plea.
Why Sympathise With Errant Builders?
Real estate developers have in the past caused immense discomfort across the country by delaying and/or not completing project deliveries, affecting uncountable home buyers and their families.
However, if examined closely, failure in procuring various regulatory approvals are a major cause for delay in many projects - an issue which needs as much debate as the ethics of builders.
While builders always face the heat, a more balanced look at reality is needed to help good players in the sector.
After the apex court clarified that it was concerned about the entire real estate sector and not just one developer, Justice Rastogi asked, “Let us go back three years when the real estate sector was badly affected. My question is: did authorities come forward to take care of them with some policy decision in those times, as a gesture of support to the real estate sector?”
What Now?
The next hearing will open with the Noida authorities answering those tough questions and we will keep you posted on their reply.
Love Is In The Server
Proptech (short for property technology) has been around since the 1980s, offering technology backed solutions to make life easy for everyone in the real estate ecosystem.
But despite being around for over three decades now, the love people have for it refuses to die.
It's mind boggling to see the number of technological innovations in the real estate sector — hundreds of tech solutions across numerous subcategories with billions in aggregate revenue, all from companies that didn't even exist ten years ago.
What Makes Proptech So Loveable?
Need a good reason? Well, here are four.
Proptech Solves Real Life Problems - Remember the time when a building floorplan was a 3 feet x 5 feet blueprint? Those darn things were a pain to carry, an even bigger pain to create, and costed a bomb when you needed a reprint. Computer aided design and rendering have ensured the end of the poster carrying days. This applies to all facets of real estate. If you get the drift, you can only send ❤
Proptech Caters To A Profitable Industry - Remove all the tech from real estate, send it back to the stone age and it is still a profitable industry. When you help a profitable industry scale up, you improve er, profits, reduce costs and get ❤ in return.
Proptech Helps You Win A Zero Sum Game - Real estate is a dog-eat-dog, zero-sum game. The market in general is making the pie bigger, but each transaction is a competition with many successful, competent players. When technology gives you an edge over the others, you are sure to ❤ it.
Proptech Is All About Collective Success - When property search engines arrived, they did not just ease the lives of a few. Similarly, when home buying went all-digital during the pandemic, the entire industry found the means to pivot and survive. The result? More ❤ for tech.
Real estate will never run out of problems to solve. Anyone who's worked a few years within the industry will know how complex processes can be done easily with technology.
Tech startups are finding and solving those problems even as you read this. In return, all they ask for is love and boat loads of money.
- Development and construction of Pune's new metro corridor will start soon and will connect Mann, near the Hinjewadi IT park, to Civil Court in Shivajinagar. There will be a total of 23 stations en-route and the entire journey from end-to-end will take about 40 minutes.
- Large construction sites in Delhi - those occupying over 20,000 sq. metres, will have to be extra careful this winter. Pollution monitoring agencies will specially focus on such sites to ensure that they follow the guidelines for controlling dust.
- Four years since its selection under the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) by the Centre, only 20% of allotted funds have been utilised and just 6 out of the 83 projects could be completed under the Patna Smart City Limited (PSCL).
- US homebuilding accelerated last month as the country is witnessing a real estate boom due to low borrowing rates and the upheavals of the Covid-19 pandemic pushing people to move, causing a supply shortage.
Well, don't we all? Benefits are always secondary.
With that, please remember to share today's Chai to get your email deleted from the fair weather friends' list forever.
See you all tomorrow.
☕ The Crew@Ginger Chai