Visakhapatnam: Owning a house or any commercial structure in the port city is further going to be a costly affair for many as the building licence fees will see a steep hike with the gadget notification soon to be issued with the revised fees.
While the impact of GST coupled with the soaring brick prices has pushed up the cost of houses, the increased building licence fees would further inflate it.
Moreover, people have to pay a bribe for the sand even as the state government is making available free of cost and all because the authorities are unable to control sand mafia.
As per the proposed building license fees, the layout subdivision permission rate for the residential and non-residential purpose would go up by 100 percent to Rs 40 and Rs 70 per sq.m built-up area from Rs 20 and Rs 35 respectively. Besides, for construction of residential building, commercial and non-commercial, the rate has increased, except when the construction is in a built-up area up to 100 sq.m.
For instance, structures like individual residential, administrative, religious, charitable building but non-high rise ones will attract Rs 60 per sq.m (Rs 45 earlier) if the built-up area is between 100-300 sq.m and beyond the 300 sqm area, the fees will be Rs 80 per sq.m. (Rs 55 earlier). And, for non-commercial high rise building, the rate will be Rs100 per sq.m which was only Rs 55 previously.
On the other hand, the building license fees for the non-residential structures such as cinema theatres, sports, offices, non-residential buildings will also see a rise of about 10 to 20 percent.
An official from the GVMC Planning wing said the new rates will be effective once the gadget notification is issued.
CREDAI, Visakhapatnam Chairman G.V.V.S. Narayana said, “The realty sector is already sick after implementation of GST and increase in the price of the construction materials.” When the corporation had sought their opinion regarding the revision of the building license fees, they had suggested that it not to implemented now citing various reasons. The increased fees will again cripple the realty sector.”
People, mainly belonging to the middle-class, are considering buying a house to be an adventure in the city.
