Budget expectations 2021: NAREDCO

In our CW Budget 2021 series, we cover expectations from associations that represent our industries. Here is a list of expectations from Budget 2021 from National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO), the autonomous self-regulatory body set up in 1998 under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India.

NAREDCO believes that rental housing will play a vital role in achieving the target of ‘Housing for All’ by 2022. Some of the salient points in NAREDCO’s recommendations resonate with that projection. They are as follows:

• Grant tax incentives to boost the segment.
• More measures to ease the liquidity situation in the long-subdued real estate segment, including the one-time roll-over of loans given to developers.
• No rent to be taxed for the period up to five years from the end of the financial year in which the certificate of completion of construction of the property is obtained from the competent authority.
• Restructuring of loans or one time roll-over in case of the stressed assets at the options of banks. In such cases, the borrower will retain the asset classification of the restructured standard accounts as standard and the same will not be treated as NPA.
• Interest rates on home loans should be below 7% per annum.
• Stamp duty rates to be reduced by 50 per cent for all the real estate transactions entered and agreements registered on or before 31 March 2020.
• Relaxation to be sought in the definition of affordable housing. The Rs 45 lakh price cap for the classification of a property as affordable housing to be done away with as it keeps most of the projects in the National Capital Region (NCR) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) out of the ambit of “affordable housing”.