REAL ESTATE

“A house is just an emotion,” says Rajesh Kumar. “Investing in mutual funds or stocks and getting your finances right should be the priority instead of being crushed under loans,” says the 34-year-old senior consultant working for an IT company in Goregaon. He has been against the idea of homeownership due to the surging EMI burden to realise the dream of buying a house in Mumbai, the most expensive city in India for real estate. His concerns are not unfounded. Earlier this month, a report by real estate consultant company, Anarock, revealed that affordable home buyers in India have been…

Imagine working hard, saving up all your life and finally, investing all of your life savings on your dream home, only to be cheated on and deprived of that dream. This nightmare has become a reality for homebuyers in over 30 Nirmal Lifestyle Housing Projects in Mulund. The Mumbai police arrested Dharmesh Jain and Rajiv Jain, directors of Nirmal, a few weeks ago for cheating homebuyers. The firm went into insolvency in 2022 after failing to repay crores of debt. What is the case against Nirmal Lifestyle Ltd.? The authorities arrested the two accused on charges of allegedly duping 34…

This is the second and final part in the series on the history of building regulations in Mumbai. This part continues where the first left off, at the turn of the twentieth century amidst the administration's efforts at slum clearance. The Development Plan Preoccupation with affordable rents and slum clearance remained the mainstay of urban planning and governance in the 20th century. At the same time, efforts to address issues such as access to open spaces, amenities and concerns of over-crowding, traffic on roads were formalised and debated upon. The very first Development Plan was introduced in 1964 and sanctioned…

The existing state of urban biodiversity, environment and natural heritage in Bengaluru is a matter of urgent concern. The impacts of ecological degradation is already felt in the city - for example, monsoons are often accompanied by the grim news of many areas getting flooded. Many of these vulnerable sites are found in large layouts and real estate projects that are built in valley zones and adjacent to lakes/rajakaluves (primary stormwater drains). A favoured market for the real estate sector, Bengaluru has witnessed an increase in built-up area that has replaced its green cover and wildlife habitats. Built-up area has…

On 8th July 2021, a Chennai-based construction and real estate firm obtained the completion certificate from the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) for its newly-constructed residential building, located in Valmiki Street of East Tambaram. The building consists of a stilt floor plus five floors and houses 15 dwelling units. Along with amenities such as rainwater harvesting structures and fire licences, the building had also declared a functional rooftop solar installation in order to obtain the completion certificate, which is a prerequisite for all builders to obtain water, sewer and power connections.  As per the Tamil Nadu Combined Development and Building…

Imagine you’re about to go to bed after a long and tiring day’s work. And at that very moment, you hear the dreaded sound of those heavy drilling machines from a house next to yours, as part of some work that looks likely to continue late into the night. Or imagine having to deal with the constant menace of dust pollution in your homes and locality because of some building activity in the neighbourhood. Perhaps not so difficult to imagine, given that it is a common issue that residents of India’s metro cities, including Chennai, have been facing for years:…

With torrential rains lashing Chennai since early November, which left several areas in the city such as T Nagar, Velachery and parts of North Chennai like Pulianthope inundated, the recurring and infamous phenomenon of unregulated and illegal construction in the city is back under the spotlight. Several reports and experts have pointed out yet again that along with faulty drains and blocked canals, rampant encroachments and illegal construction, especially along the banks of the Adyar and Cooum rivers and the Ennore-Kosasthalaiyar basin, have prevented water seepage, thus causing severe inundation. According to a recent report in The New Indian Express,…

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we saw that the impact on biodiversity is completely ignored when real estate projects are given Environment Clearance (EC), even though documents submitted by the builder are often completely obscure or even copy-pasted from other publications. Yet the SEIAA (State Environment Impact Assessment Authority) clears most of these projects without question. When it comes to mega ‘township’ projects with built-up area above 1.5 lakh square metre, builders have to submit an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA), giving details of the abundances and densities of flora and fauna in the project area as…

Part 1 of this series looked at how mid-sized real estate projects in Bengaluru get Environment Clearance (EC) quickly, irrespective of their impact on biodiversity. But what about larger ‘township’ projects exceeding built-up area of 1.5 lakh sq m or total plot area of five lakh sq m (50 ha)? On paper, the criteria is stricter for these - the builder has to submit a detailed EIA (Environment Impact Assessment). The State Environmental Appraisal Committee (SEAC) has to assess the EIA and recommend the project, before the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) clears the project. However, environmentalists have for…

Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environment Management Plan (EMP). These are mandated by law to get environment clearance for large real estate development projects. Builders in Bengaluru, however, seem to have hit on an easy way to answer the detailed list of questions that the requisite forms ask for. Just copy-paste answers from one project to another, irrespective of site location and local biodiversity requirements. As the consultants who prepare these EIAs and EMPs are often common to more than one project, it is easily done. This three-part series examines how the builders responded to the questions on biodiversity and…