Hyderabad: The TS government has lined up a series of fiscal incentives to boost the real estate activity in the state which has been in a slump ever since the demonetisation announcement last November.
While all other sectors have recovered from note ban shock, real estate continues to be in a slump. This has resulted in no major earnings for the stamps and registration department.
Consequently, the government is expected to announce special incentives for the realty sector in the forthcoming Budget. Sources said that decrease in stamp duty and registration fee are being considered.
Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts remain the backbone of the state’s property market and contribute a major chunk to the government’s earnings every month. But this has been on a steep decline since last November.
The real estate sector has seen a boom in the state with the creation of 21 new districts in 2016. While the new districts came into being on October 12, 2016, land prices had skyrocketed in May 2016, about six months earlier, after Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao made an official announcement.
With TRS leaders leaking information on probable district headquarters, land prices in areas surrounding the headquarters increased multi-fold. At some places, the average cost per acre saw a four-fold increase, from around Rs 25 lakh per acre to over Rs 1 crore.
TS Sub-Registrars Association president R. Srinvasa Rao said, “There has been a decline in registration of sale deeds of land, flats and independent houses.
Though the situation improved after the Centre allowed registration fee to be paid in old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in November and December, it fell sharply in January.”
In GHMC limits, the situation is better in core areas of the city, but business is dull on Hyderabad outskirts. On an average, 40 property documents used to be registered per day in the core areas of the city earlier. It came down to 15 in November, but has now reached the average.
However, on the outskirts, where the average which used to around 50 per day, it crashed to 10 per day in November. Though three months have passed, the recovery has been dismally slow, with the average property registrations crawling to 20 per day. There are a total of 41 sub-registrar offices in GHMC limits covering the city’s core areas and outskirts.
