Naredco-Maharashtra extends stamp duty waiver scheme by two months to push housing sales

It will not only push the housing sales trajectory; but also send positive signals to the foreign investors to invest in the sector and bring in more liquidity, he said.

“The zero stamp duty intervention by the state government has ensured a quick inventory turnover and the trend will continue in the long-run. The next fiscal will see more liquidity with the foreign investors coming in,” Rajan Bandelkar, vice chairman, NAREDCO-Maharashtra, said.

NAREDCO also claimed that the Maharashtra government’s stamp duty waiver pushed Mumbai’s residential realty sales by 300 percent from August 2020 to October 2020.

Sandeep Runwal, President-Elect, NAREDCO-Maharashtra, said that the “lower tax regime has given volumes without impacting the government's revenues," he said.

With a sharp demand correction over pre-COVID levels, the apex body of developers is also looking at foreign investors to invest in eligible projects. Keeping this in mind, it has organised a three–day virtual ‘Real Estate and Infrastructure Investors’ Summit (REIIS) – 2020’ from November 25 to November 27.

The theme of the three-day summit is India – Opportunities in the Coming Year.

The event will be jointly organised by NAREDCO and Asia  Pacific Real Estate Association (APREA), a leading pan-Asian trade association with focus on cross-border real estate investment, and promotion of real estate as a preferred investment asset class across Asia-Pacific and beyond.

The trade body also expects a major policy upheaval like the affordable rental policy of the government, the proposed housing policy of the Maharashtra state and the finance minister’s announcement providing tax relief to both the developers and homebuyers with respect to the relaxations granted under Section 43 (CA) and Section 56 (2)(X) of the Income Tax Act. These policies together will play a major role in shaping up demand.

Anarock will be the knowledge partner for the event.

NAREDCO has pegged a substantial amount of foreign investment flows into the Indian real estate sector in the next two years. The trade body is expecting major foreign funds like Blackstone, Brookfield, GIC, Xander, Ascendas, CPPIB, Warburg Pincus and Goldman Sachs to enhance their investment in the sector.

The summit's partner Anarock has said that $8 billion capital inflows are expected into the sector in the next fiscal. The capital will be pumped into various asset classes across residential, commercial, logistics and data centre segments.

APREA believes the market capitalisation for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) real estate markets has grown over 400 percent in the last 15 years and has outperformed the broader markets in the past 20 years with increasing participation from institutional investors. Over 50 percent investment in India is in real estate and the sector is expected to touch the $1 trillion mark in the next few years. Institutionalisation is expected to continue.

“We expect the region's real estate investments to rebound and to register inflows of over $660 billion next year with China and India remaining the region's top emerging markets,” Sigrid Zialcita, CEO of APREA, said.

The summit will be attended by Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs secretary Durga Shankar Mishra, HDFC Ltd Vice-Chairman Keki Mistry, and APREA CEO Sigrid Zialcita, .