The real estate industry in India is flourishing, and there are many options accessible for people who want to buy or sell property. Online portals have gained popularity as a means of conducting real estate transactions as the real estate sector becomes more and more digitized. We’ll look at some of the top Indian real estate portals and websites for buying and selling property in this article.

1.) Magicbricks: One of the top online real estate marketplaces in India. It was introduced in 2006, and the Times Group owns it. The website offers a wide range of services for buying, selling, and renting real estate, including verified listings, virtual tours of the homes, and help with the necessary paperwork. Magicbricks is an all-inclusive website for anyone trying to purchase or sell property in India because it also provides features like property price trends, localities’ insights, and user reviews.

2.) 99acres: 99acres is a different well-known real estate marketplace in India that provides a variety of services for buyers and sellers of real estate. The platform was introduced in 2005, and Info Edge, the business behind Naukri.com, owns it. Users of 99acres can access verified listings, virtual tours of properties, and price trend analyses for different areas. The platform serves as a one-stop shop for all property-related issues by providing a variety of services like home loans, property appraisal, and legal advice.

3.) Housing.com: Housing.com is a well-known real estate website that employs technology to make buying and selling real estate easier. PropTiger.com, which launched the platform in 2012, is the platform’s owner. A number of services are available through Housing.com, such as verified listings, virtual tours of properties, and help with paperwork. Additionally, the platform features a special function dubbed “Slice View,” which gives consumers a 360-degree view of the inside of the property. Housing.com is a great resource for Indian buyers and sellers of real estate because it also offers users information on neighbourhood trends and real estate price indices.

4.) CommonFloor: Quikr is the owner of CommonFloor, a real estate platform that was introduced in 2007. Users can get verified listings, virtual tours of properties, and help with documents through the platform. Along with a variety of other services, CommonFloor also provides legal counsel and housing loans. The platform features a distinctive feature called “Community Living,” which gives customers knowledge about the neighbourhood, including specifics about the area’s schools, hospitals, and services. Additionally, CommonFloor provides a mobile app that makes it simple for users to browse the website while on the go.

5.) PropTiger: Elara Technologies is the owner of PropTiger, a real estate platform that was first introduced in 2011. Users can get verified listings, virtual tours of properties, and help with documents through the platform. Additional services provided by PropTiger include home loans, property appraisals, and legal support. The website features a distinctive feature dubbed “Real Insight,” which gives customers data-driven insights into the real estate market. Additionally, PropTiger has a mobile app that makes it simple for consumers to browse the website while on the go.

These are some of the top websites/portals for buying and selling real estate in India. Every platform has a different collection of features and services, therefore it’s critical to compare them all according to your own requirements. Online portals provide a convenient and hassle-free approach to buy or sell property in India, regardless of the platform you select.

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Auction prices are usually around 20 to 30 percent less than market prices. However, there are also risks of purchasing such property. So if you are thinking of buying property at auction cheaply, then keep the following points in mind.

• Find out the market value of the property before you buy it. For this, hire a professional property appraiser and according to what the price appraiser tells you, transact the property accordingly.
• If you have bid for the property, know that the bidders will have to deposit 10% of the reserve price in the form of deposits. On winning the bid, 25% of the share will have to be deposited on the same day. Failure to do so will result in forfeiture of money. Therefore, you should arrange sufficient amount before the auction process.
• Before purchasing the property, make sure to check all the necessary documents including the original sale deed and non-encroachment certificate.
• Before submitting your bid, check that the owner has a recovery certificate from the Data Recovery Tribunal. Also, to protect the owner from any future claims, please take a certificate of compensation from the bank.

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Knight Frank India, a property consulting company, said the average prices of homes in the six major cities of the country declined by two to seven per cent during July-September. These cities are Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad are included.

However, the average house prices in Bangalore and Hyderabad rose by three and four per cent, respectively, compared to the year before.

Shitir Baijal, MD, Knight Frank India, said that the third quarter of 2020 saw a significant improvement in sales and launches. The developers’ focus is on cleaning up inventory. Home buyers are giving more preference to ready properties.

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India Ratings and Research said in their reports that the home buyers will be benefited that are awaiting possession of their homes, by the India government’s decision to set up a Rs 25,000 crores fund to provide a priority for debt financing to complete stalled housing projects. The Fund would provide an alternative outlet to net-worth-positive projects stalled because of liquidity/credit availability issues. Many non-banking financial firms and housing financing companies will benefit from reviving viable projects listed as non-performing assets (NPAs).

Nevertheless, the imbalance in demand-supply is likely to worsen with stalled projects on the move, and pricing pressures in the sector may become more pronounced if overall housing demand is not recovering. In addition, the market expansion for Grade I players could also continue as supply from non-Grade I players are being made available. Under India Ratings and Research (Fitch Group) classification, Grade I developers are the one who has a reputed brand name, significant market shares, solid executive skills, solid financial flexibility and regulatory compliance with strong balance sheets.

Modification in eligibility criteria to support distressed projects.

The latest guidelines also expanded the scope of projects under this special window which can benefit from the funding. It will include housing units of up to Rs 2 crores (Mumbai – Rs 2 crores; other 7 cities – Rs 1.5 crores; and the rest of the cities – Rs 1 crore) and projects graded as NPA or are subject to NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) proceedings with a net worth positive (cash flows greater than the project cost). In comparison to the previous announcement in September 2019, which only limited funding to non-NPA and non-NCLT projects, the new measure will support fundamentally viable yet struggling projects due to slow sales and/or the lack of availability of credit.

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By Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants

In any discussion about affordable housing in India today, the fact that a lot of such housing is actually lying vacant is bound to crop up. One may point out that, especially with the Government’s avowed intention of providing Housing for All by 2022, this supply should logically go towards bridging the affordable housing gap.

However, it is obviously not that simple or it would already have happened. A lot of this budget housing inventory is lying vacant for good reasons.

Before we get into the reason, let’s take a quick look at the numbers. Around 237,000 units across top 7 cities belonging to the affordable housing segment (units priced less than INR 40 lakh) were unsold as of Q2 CY 2018. This number pertains only to the unsold units of organized private developers and does not include Government housing schemes, which essentially means that the number would go further northwards if those are included.

Given the unrelenting requirements for urban budget housing, inventory that has been created in the major cities by seasoned organized players who know what they’re doing will eventually get absorbed. But what about projects generated by the unorganized sector – the innumerable smaller buildings, often one-off undertakings by fringe developers in far-flung areas? These contribute the major share of stock which lies idle – and may continue to lie idle – in the post-RERA era. Let’s examine why.

What lies beneath

Broadly speaking, there can be three reasons (or combinations of them) why an affordable housing project with ready-to-move units remains unoccupied. There can obviously be other reasons as well – as Shakespeare so aptly put it, ‘there is many a slip between the cup and the lip’ – but a majority of unsold ready projects fall into any or combinations of these three:

1. No infrastructure to make them liveable:

Many barren projects are the result of good, old-fashioned miscalculation – the developers had not undertaken thorough feasibility studies prior to launch. They just went ahead with launching affordable housing in an area because land was cheap and local development regulations were lax. When housing comes up in areas which are simply too far from the city’s workplace hubs and lack the necessary support infrastructure –  most importantly transport-specific infrastructure – the results are fairly predictable.

1. Inferior construction:

Many such projects have serious flaws in design and construction and were launched before RERA hit the market. RERA also applies retrospectively to under-construction projects and is very strict about factors like construction quality. Overtly inferior construction will not pass the RERA scanner and cannot even be marketed, leave alone sold. Interestingly, due to the bad construction, ready-to-move inventory in badly-constructed projects will also deteriorate more rapidly if it remains unoccupied for a few more years.

1. Legal flaws:

RERA is also strict on projects which were launched without all the necessary approvals in place (and also on non-approved floors in otherwise approved projects). This obviously makes homes in them unattractive to buyers, who will shun them in favour of fully-compliant developments. With a huge pileup of unsold and ready-to-move inventory available in most markets, there is no shortage of such options.

Of course, not all legal flaws are created equal – in some cases, non-compliant projects can get RERA clearance if the legal transgressions are minor and permissions can be obtained after a fine is paid or certain structural changes are done. However, projects with major legal flaws will not have this option.

It could be argued that projects with such drawbacks should have found buyers before RERA kicked in – after all, they are invariably very affordably-priced and there have always been unwary buyers who do not look beyond this all-important factor. However, even if consumers don’t do a thorough due diligence, banks most certainly do. Intending buyers would not have been granted home loans if there were serious flaws in the project.

What can be done to make vacant housing marketable?

  Its ‘Housing for All by 2022’ commitment obviously puts the Government under pressure to help deploy the necessary saleable stock. It has two primary options within its powers to make this happen:

• The first way would be to rapidly deploy infrastructure in areas which have unsold budget housing. Even if this cannot happen immediately, buyers will still take some comfort from a formally-announced plan to deploy such infrastructure in the foreseeable future. In such cases, many buyers would be willing to buy now and wait till the area becomes more inhabitable.
• The second way would be to announce amnesty schemes to regularize projects with relatively minor deviations (with certain provisos and conditions) and/or were built without the necessary approvals. This is possible and has, in fact, been happening in many cases across the country where the legal breach is not major enough so as to be a total deal-breaker.

If, for instance, the project has been built in an NDZ or environmentally sensitive area, strategic tweaks in the city’s development plan can do the trick. As we have seen in the recent case of Mumbai where the previous NDZ salt pan lands were laid open for development, many non-compliance issues can be addressed by Government policy intervention.

Conclusion:

The selective practice of regularizing illegally-developed buildings has drawn a lot of flak in the past. Under normal circumstances, the Government would obviously not create infrastructure merely rescue players with marooned projects. However, the ‘Housing for All by 2022’ is a veritable Sword of Damocles hanging over the incumbent Government’s head. Desperate times call for desperate measures which need not always have a unilateral buy-in from all stakeholders – as was amply vouchsafed by the implementation of RERA.

At the end of the day, we certainly do want to see a roof over every Indian’s head – if not by 2022, then at least at some point in the foreseeable future. It may be an item on an electoral manifest, but it is there because it is important – very important. Housing for all citizens is an express need for any developing country, and the fundament of a steady and growth-oriented economy.

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By Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants

Affordable Housing Keeps the Momentum Going  

• Unsold inventory down 2% from 7.11 lakh units in Q1 2018 to 7.0 lakh units in Q2 2018
• Unsold inventory declined 10% from 7.7 lakh units in Q4 2017

There has been a whopping 50% jump in overall new housing launches in Q2 2018 over the preceding quarter, with the maximum supply in the affordable segment (< ₹ 40 lakh). Interestingly, the affordable housing supply increased by 100% in Q2 2018 over Q1 2018, and this supply has led the overall growth.

On the sales front too, housing sales across the top 7 cities of India also rose by 24% compared to Q1 2018, indicating that hitherto abstaining home buyers are back on the market. Developers are working hard on clearing unsold inventory with attractive schemes, freebies and discounts. Moreover, the positive impact of the policy reforms including RERA and GST have begun to bear fruit.

Affordable Housing – 100% jump and key growth contributor Q2 supply

Q2 2018 New Launch Tracker

The top 7 cities (NCR, MMR, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata and Hyderabad) witnessed new unit launches of around 50,100 units in Q2 2018as opposed to 33,400 units in Q1 2018. The major cities contributing to Q2 2018 new unit additions include Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), National Capital Region (NCR), Bengaluru and Pune, altogether accounting for 75% of the new supply.

• Approx. 6,900 units were launched in Pune – a significant rise of 214% from Q1 2018. Two large affordable housing projects comprising 1,900 units were the key contributors to the rise in new units hitting the Pune market in Q2.
• Hyderabad added 5,550 units in Q2 2018, a massive quarterly increase of 109%. The city has garnered prominent visibility on the Indian real estate map with its high liveability index vis-à-vis many other cities.
• Chennai’s new supply doubled to 4,200 units in Q2 2018 compared to only 2,100 units in Q1 2018 – a rise of 100%. Over 64% new supply was added in the affordable segment.
• NCR contributed 17% new supply with 8,500 units, a 89% increase over the previous quarter. Of this, 54% comprised of units in theaffordable segment.
• MMR saw maximum supply with nearly 13,600 units in Q2 2018, a significant increase of 58% over the previous quarter.
• Bengaluru added 8,800 units in Q2 2018, a quarterly increase of 28%. This city is maintaining its intelligent approach to changing market dynamics.
• Kolkata’s new launches recorded a drop of 61% from the previous quarter, with approx. 2,550 units. During the previous quarter, a large affordable housing project of around 3,500 units was a key contributor to the new launch supply. The drop noted in Q2 2018 reflects Kolkata developers’ focus on completing under-construction projects rather than launching new ones.

Improving Sales Figures

In terms of housing sales during Q2 2018, top 7 cities together witnessed an increase of 24% over the previous quarter. Around 60,800 units were sold in Q2 2018 with NCR, MMR, Bengaluru and Pune together accounting for 81% of the overall sales. End-user driven Bengaluru led the pack on the back of re-ignited interest from IT/ITeS professionals reacting to the mitigated job risks and overall favourable economic environment.

1. Bengaluru saw the highest jump in sales in Q2 2018, with sales increasing by 27% – from 11,500 units in Q1 2018 to 14,600 units in Q2 2018.
2. MMR sales rose by 26% – from 12,050 units in Q1 2018 to 15,200 units in Q2 2018.
3. Sales in Hyderabad increased by 25% over Q1 2018 with 4,750 units
4. Pune’s sales increased by 24% over the previous quarter with 8,400 units
5. NCR’s sales increased by 23% – from 9,100 units in Q1 2018 to 11,150 units in Q2 2018 – a significant improvement in market conditions.
6. Kolkata’s sales increased by 17% – from 3,420 units in Q1 2018 to 4,000 units in Q2 2018.
7. Chennai’s sales rose by 16% – from 2,320 units in Q1 2018 to 2,700 units in Q2 2018.

Unsold Inventory – The overall unsold inventory declined by 2% – from 7.11 lakh units in Q1 2018 to 7.0 lakh units in Q2 2018 (by 10% from 7.7 lakh units in Q4 2017).

Marginal Price Increase – Residential property prices across the top cities increased by 1% in Q2 2018 compared to the previous quarter, barring Chennai and Kolkata (where prices remained stagnant). The ample unsold stock is keeping price growth in check.

Dominant Segments – The market continued to be dominated by the affordable and mid-range segments. 77% (38,600 units) of unit launches were in the price category of less than INR 80 lakh. The affordable segment accounted for a whopping 46% share of the total new launches.

Conclusion:

Considering the growth in supply and sales in H1 2018, the upcoming festive season may finally be a vibrant one again, more so as more new launches across the major cities will offer buyers a wider spread of options and help control prices.

However, will infrastructure status to affordable housing and sops for MIG-I and MIG-II homebuyers under PMAY help fulfil the Government’s vision of Housing for All by 2022? It’s still hard to say, but what is certain is that affordable housing has kept the market’s momentum going for some time now. If developers remain laser-focused, add only relevant supply and ensure 100% RERA compliance, we may yet see this ‘dream project’ become a reality.

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By Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants

The landmark reform of Goods & Services Tax (GST) was, in many ways, the final bullet shot to the Indian real estate sector in July 2017. The industry was already reeling under the immediate impact of DeMo and RERA.

GST was touted to be a gamechanger for all sectors including real estate. It was largely anticipated that GST will provide a much-needed respite to homebuyers by way of reduced property prices. Unfortunately, with GST completing one year, it emerges that these expectations were unrealistic.

While the tax-on-tax has been eliminated with the advent of GST, the overall outgo from homebuyers’ pockets seems to have increased by as much as 8% across cities. This ultimately reduces the demand in real estate. Also, the higher tax rate on purchasing a home – an already staggering expense for most Indians – has kept many home buyers and investors off the market.

Let’s understand this better.

• In real time, the cost of raw materials under the GST regime underwent minor changes – cement, paints and plasters were taxed at 28%, and iron material at 18%. Building housing with high-quality materials has bumped up the overall cost, as most materials used in the construction process fall in the 28% tax category.
• Moreover, end-users have not received any consummate benefit of GST because of the inherent ineffectiveness of the anti-profiteering provisions. They will only benefit if the base property prices are reduced and developers pass on the tax credits to their customers, which unfortunately is not happening.
• Another problem with GST is that it was restricted to under-construction properties, while ready-to-move-in homes and land were exempted from it. This considerably reduced end-user demand for under-construction properties. 
• Meanwhile, builders reduced the supply of the new housing projects. As per ANAROCK data, approximately 68,500 units were launched between January to May 2018 across the top 7 cities, which is 4% lower than the new launch figures for January-May 2017 (approximately 71,500 units).

Furthermore, despite the Government’s consistent efforts to promote affordable housing and fulfil its mission of ‘Housing for All by 2022,’ this critical segment is yet to see any significant positive impact of GST.

• Earlier this year, the Government extended the concessional rate of 12% GST for construction of houses under the Credit-Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) in order to promote affordable housing, which was given infrastructure status in the 2017-18 Union Budget.
• While the effective GST rate came down to 8% post deduction of one-third of the amount the property incurs towards land costs, it did little to impact the overall absorption of homes in this segment.
• Moreover, back in 2015 under the PMAY scheme, the Government set a target of building 5 crore homes in less than a decade. However, as per data, India has added only 180,877 homes under the scheme since its launch, underscoring the challenge in achieving this ambitious target.

Thus, notwithstanding all efforts, the ‘real’ impact of GST is yet to be seen in the realty sector. Also, it is imperative that the Government engages with all stakeholders to address their concerns and work in harmony with them to bring in more clarity about GST for the sector and buyers alike.

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By Santhosh Kumar, Vice Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants

Residential Real Estate

The Millennium City of Gurugram has a very prominent place on India’s residential real estate map and is considered a bellwether of the state of the market for NCR. If we study what happened in the city’s housing market in the first quarter of 2018 against the same period in 2017, some interesting changes emerge.

Pricing

• Q1 2018 – The weighted average price for housing properties launched between January to May in 2018 is INR 4580/sft.
• Q1 2017 – The weighted average price for housing properties launched between January to May in 2017 was INR 4,300/sft.

In other words, we are seeing an uptick in pricing for newly-launched housing projects in Gurugram, in line with the returning end-user demand as a result of improving market transparency.

Launches

• In Q1 2018, approximately 4,100 new units have been launched in Gurugram, accounting for nearly 32% of the total stock in entire NCR. Interestingly, out of the total stock launched in Gurgaon during this period, nearly 37% consisted of units in the affordable category (<INR 40 lakh), followed by 33% in the luxury segment (INR 80 lakh –  1.5 Cr) and 28% in the ultra-luxury category (>INR 1.5 Cr). The mid-income housing segment saw very few new launches in 2018.
• In Q1 2017, approximately 5,600 new units were launched in Gurugram, accounting for nearly 43% of NCR’s total stock. Out of the total stock launched in this period, a whopping 83% comprised of units in the affordable category (<INR 40 lakh), followed by 16% in the mid segment (INR 40 – 80 lakh). The luxury and ultra-luxury categories saw minimal launches during the period.

While the new launch units in Gurugram have declined in 2018 as against 2017, particularly because builders are focusing on completing their previously launched projects, it is interesting to note that the new supply in the luxury and ultra-luxury segments have seen a major uptick this year on the back of renewed buyer confidence. The government’s focus on affordable housing had somewhat taken the sheen off other segments (luxury and ultra-luxury) in the previous years.

Unsold Inventory

• In Q1 2018, out of the total unsold housing stock in NCR (approximately 2,00400 units), nearly 26% were unsold in Gurugram
• In Q1 2017, out of the total unsold stock in NCR (approximately 2,15,000 units), nearly 24% were unsold in Gurugram.

The burden of unsold housing in entire NCR is quite evidently reducing, although absorption in Gurgaon was marginally faster last year.

Commercial Real Estate

Gurgaon is a prominent commercial office market of Delhi-NCR as well as India, and the dynamics of its commercial office market in Q1 2018 as against the same period last year are worth noting. The data indicates that the city is holding its own on the commercial office front.

• In Q1 2018, the city saw significant demand from IT-BPM as well as manufacturing and engineering companies. In this period, there were 68 million sq. ft. of good quality office stock in Gurugram’s CBD and other areas. While the CBD has a limited vacancy of 2-3%, there is a vacancy rate of 35-37% in other areas. The CBD areas ofGurugram command rentals of INR 118-122/sq.ft./month, which is lower than CBDs of many other cities. However, in other areas of Gurugram, one can lease an office property at INR 65-70/sq.ft./month.
• In Q1 2017, Gurugram’s commercial office sector witnessed significant absorption from BFSI, engineering and manufacturing companies. In this period, the city had around 66 million sq. ft. of good quality stock altogether in its CBD and other areas. The vacancy in CBD areas was around 5-6%, while in other areas it was around 35-40%. Gurugram’s CBD areas commanded rentals of INR 118-120/sq.ft./month, while other areas of the city saw office rentals at INR 68-70/sq.ft./month.

With improving business conditions and rising ease of doing business, global companies are now flocking back to India and Gurugram is a priority destination for many of them. While lease rentals in the CBD and non-CBD areas have not changed significantly over the last one year, the vacancies have dropped marginally – largely on the back of rising demand.

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By Realty Quarter Bureau

According to a report by property consultant Knight Frank, co-working companies took up two million sq ft space in the first quarter of 2018 itself, which has exceeded the annual tally of 2017 at 1.8 million sq ft. “With the expansion plans of major players and the increasing appetite for this format from occupiers, property owners and co-working operators should see annual transaction numbers triple from current levels, over the next three years,” Knight Frank India chief economist and national director – research, Samantak Das said in a statement.

Currently, NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru house most of the co-working stock in India, followed by Pune and Kolkata, the report said. According to the report, while co-working companies accounted for just less than 1.8 million sq ft of the 41 million sq ft of annual commercial office space transactions volume, the demand will increase significantly in the next three years. There are close to 200 co-working players operating an estimated 400 shared workspaces across the country today, compared to just Regus and a few localised players in 2010 running less than 30 such centres, the report said.

In Q1 2018, the highest co-working transaction activity was witnessed in Bengaluru, NCR and Hyderabad markets, which contributed 43 per cent, 16 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. “India, today, is witnessing a proliferation of start-ups and SMEs, buoyed by the government’s concerted efforts to create a sustainable eco-system for entrepreneurs in the country. Large number of them being millennial believes in harboring global aspirations, with a staggeringly ambitious mind-set that was not in evidence a few years back. This provides a perfect platform for dynamic co-working business centres, to cater to the office space needs of these aggressive growth-seeking start-ups,” Das added.

The report further said private equity players have also been looking to invest in co-working startups, as was visible in the Sequoia Capital deal, which invested USD 20 million in mid-2017 in co-working space start-up, Awfis.

The agency however, pointed out that despite the demand for co-working space, there are several challenges, including changing the conventional mindset of a client, data security and privacy that have to be tackled.

“The fact that large Indian corporates today constitute around 50 per cent of the co-working operator’s overall client roster bears testament to its increasingly widespread acceptance among mainstream occupiers,” Das added.

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Prashant Thakur, Head – Research, ANAROCK Property Consultants

Mitigating the Hazards of NDZ to Affordable Housing Bonanza

After a year-long delay, the final draft of Greater Mumbai Development Plan (DP) 2034 recently saw the light of day. The highlights were the amendments in the development control regulations (DCR) in terms of increased FSI and the opening of the salt pan lands for construction of affordable houses, which are now the talk of the town.

DP 2034 visualizes Greater Mumbai as a ‘competitive, inclusive and sustainable city’. It goes without saying that decongesting the city must be a prime focal point in such an agenda. Accordingly, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) has decided to utilize the city’s huge tracts of salt pan lands for affordable housing projects.

A total of 3,355 hectares of salt pan lands are spread across MCGM in Dahisar, Goregaon, Mulund, Bhandup, Kanjur, Nahur, Ghatkopar, Turbhe, Mandale, Chembur, Wadala and Anik. These lands, which were classified as salt pan lands and no development zones (NDZs) for decades are now open for new development.

According to the final draft of DP, 2,100 hectares of salt pan lands are now demarcated for the construction of 10 lakh affordable housing development, 1,100 hectares for tourism development and only 30 hectares for salt pans.

Ramifications of obliterating the natural buffer between the Arabian Sea and the island city

As per the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification (2011) salt pan lands are ecologically sensitive areas falling under the category CRZ 1B where no development activity is allowed except exploration of natural gas and extraction of salts. Because of Mumbai’s unique challenges, a concession has now been given under CRZ 2011to redevelop the NDZ areas under public-private partnerships (PPP), with the FSI in line with the prevailing norms of the city.

Moreover, salt pan parcels – previously categorized as wetlands according to Wetland Rules, 2017 – have been tweaked, by no longer terming them as wetlands. This provides the government an opportunity to convert them to residential-commercial spaces.

Salt pans lands – geographically the low-lying swathes in the inter-tidal lines – are crucial for Greater Mumbai as they not only provide thousands of salt harvesters a livelihood but also help maintain ecological balance by supporting thousands of species of migratory birds and fishes. The salt pan lands, which also have thick mangroves, act as a buffer line that protects the island city from heavy rains and floods during monsoon.

Another critical aspect that will arise from the conversion of these lands for real estate development is that the region will be more prone to earthquakes, as the wet soil is likely to transmit earthquake vibrations rapidly.

How the water-locked city can mitigate the risk of future disasters

On the one hand, unlocking of the salt flats in Greater Mumbai to expand its horizons as per DP 2034 comes with obvious benefits like decongesting the island city and its suburbs, rationalising property prices and boosting affordable housing. On the other hand, we have potential drawbacks such as increased vulnerability to seismic hazards, floods and accelerated corrosion of structures due to the accumulation of huge volumes of sodium chloride on the salt pans.

However, there are some of the consolidatory measures that can be employed while achieving the no doubt critical mass housing objectives under the Greater Mumbai’s Vision 2034:

• Upgrading the existing age-old infrastructure

It is critical to assess the impact that the additional housing on the salt pan lands would have on the existing urban infrastructure of Greater Mumbai. The creaking suburban rail network and inefficient management of both solid waste and stormwater need to be augmented. Additionally, the ‘carrying capacity’ of the city needs to be determined – specifically its ability to provide all citizens of Greater Mumbai a decent quality of life with access to basic amenities and infrastructural facilities.

• Boosting open spaces to manage surface water runoff

When compared to other global super cities, Greater Mumbai is seriously deprived of open spaces. As per the Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (URDPFI) guidelines, 10-12 sq.m. of open space must be allocated per person – currently, only 1.24 sq.m. are available in Mumbai.

By increasing the existing open spaces while simultaneously preserving the 12,859 hectares of natural spaces designated in DP 2034, the city’s permeable surfaces can reduce rainfall runoff. This, in turn, aids sustainable urban development.

• Creating a stable foundation to avoid geologic hazards

Greater Mumbai basically consists of basalt beneath the ground level surface. Unlike granite, basalt’s composition is weak – and disintegrates when exposed to wind and water. Around two to three years must be devoted to stabilizing the structures as the soil hardens and compacts with reduced moisture.

Also, the presence of sodium chloride makes the salt pan tracts liable to corrosion and hence, the structures built on them will be relatively less stable. Another concern with the salt pan lands is the required depth of piling for foundations – which is 15-20 meters until rock is found, when compared to the usual 13 meters-deep foundation.

Having said that, the geological and soil aspects’ potential impact of increasing the cost of construction on the affordability of the properties built on the salt land will only become apparent once the DP 2034 begins to materialize.
 

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