Could Township Living Be The Flavour Of Residential Real Estate In 2017?

A house at a reasonable price, well-equipped with all the contemporary fixtures and built in the heart of a bustling metropolis has turned into a utopian dream. With most cities facing a scarcity of land in central areas, developing such kind of housing projects becomes difficult for developers. Though, suburbs and peripheral regions of larger cities offer space for real estate developments, if buyers compare property prices these upcoming areas are much more affordable to the ones available in central areas of a city. But what makes them unpopular among potential buyers? Infrastructure quality, basic social amenities need to be the focus.

Townships are in demand

Integrated township projects are the current trend in the real estate sector with developers wooing buyers with new concepts. Development of a peripheral location is dependent on the evolution of a local ecosystem, city infrastructure and requires government intervention to a large degree. Vikas Bhasin, MD, Saya Group says “there are huge townships which are being planned across various peripheries across many metropolitan cities. The prime reason behind the demand of peripheries getting a high is the availability of wide spaces as the hearts of these cities are nearing saturation or land is not available in plenty." With all this in the pipeline, even the government has been promoting affordable housing through various initiatives. The upcoming Union Budget 2017 will again go a long way in ascertaining the government's push towards the same. All this put together, 2017 looks a very promising year ahead for the residential real estate on the affordable front in the country.

City life v/s integrated townships

The upbeat city life lures the buyers with its convenient public transportation, nightlife and employment opportunities. But, the pricing factor always remains a major concern with the space constraints. While buying their dream home, buyers can still sacrifice the utopian city life but not spend the hard earned money into just buying a single home. Plus most cities are congested with traffic snarls, poor parking space and lack of recreational facilities like parks. Thus, integrated township developments present a convenient solution. Real estate developers across metros and big cities are concentrating on developing mixed, integrated township developments.

In the last one decade, the landscape of most suburbs has changed a lot. The kind of facilities and services provided in big cities are now getting replicated in most residential suburbs in the form of townships. Kushagr Ansal, Director, Ansal Housing points out "residential housing is one part of the Indian real estate sector which will never see a lack of demand and not exactly in the current scenario. The current market is flooded with end users and if developers can decipher the demands of the customers, one can expect them to achieve conversions than usual."

Today, townships are planned to create an integrated and lively community for residents with a focus to improve the quality of life. Ansal also mentioned, “real estate is one market which is very much driven by what exactly the customers require. In addition to that, with more and more impetus being laid towards improving the infrastructure in and around populated areas, townships can be developed around peripheries in order to accommodate bulk of the population.”

The benefits are numerous of owing a property in an upcoming township. As a buyer, one has enough property options in a township. Properties ranging from medium-sized apartments to independent villas in addition to shopping malls/centres, cinema halls, schools, hospitals and other basic amenities required by residents of an advanced and developed urban mofussil.

Did 2016 bring in affordability?

Real estate developers constructing townships can be given more permits for the expansion of such townships. This will improve affordability in the housing segment. Kaushal Nagpal, Co-founder, BookingKA₹ says, "2016 turned out to be a fairly decent year for residential housing with a bulk of Tier-II cities witnessing inroads of major real estate firms coming in with a wide range of affordable housing solutions. With the tide in favour, affordable housing townships will be the trend in near future as there is ample support from the government and definite demand from the consumers. Developers, on the other hand, would have to ensure quality constructions and timely deliveries to attract more of investments from organised firms."

Also read: Why There Is A Need To Make Affordable More Affordable

Government's vision

There should be uniformity in the policies pertaining to the development of townships. As per the existing policies across states, townships should include some portion of the land for affordable housing for the economically weaker section (EWS) and the lower income groups (LIG). These townships aid the development of infrastructure. Land acquisition is another challenge which needs to be addressed. Easier land acquisition coupled with quicker construction approvals will ease large-scale development of affordable housing under the township policy. Rajesh Goyal, Vice President CREDAI-Western UP & MD, RG Group points out, "there is a huge growth prospect for residential housing in Indian real estate and the sole reason being the requirement of over 20 million houses over the span of next six years. This reason has prompted the government to promote affordable housing in the country in order to ensure the maximum number of people getting a roof. There has been a considerable increase in the project launches in Tier-II cities and all this has been witnessed on the affordable housing front because of the price factor playing a very important role in the non-metropolitan cities."

The state governments of Rajasthan, Haryana, Maharashtra and Gujarat have already incentivised township development. Other Indian states should also replicate the similar models. In Gurgaon, the government is promoting integrated township projects in a larger scale. To fuel the growth the government is also proposing the relaxation of some development rules for such projects. The developers like DLF, Ansal API, Tata Housing and Experion are operating in these areas have benefited from the scheme. There are few real estate developers who are attracting buyers with concepts such as 'walk-to-work', eco-friendly environment and large open spaces. These projects are popular among buyers.