Dream a dreamless dream

Builders blame the government and the government blames the builders. But ordinary folk can only look at enticing billboards and luxurious ads and wonder if their dream of owning a modest house will ever come true. Surely, this is one possibility that can never happen

Akash Bisht Delhi   

Rohit Handa's eyes lit up when he saw world's cheapest car, Nano, at the recently held Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi. His dream of owning a car and house no longer looked like a dream. An engineer with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi for more than 15 years, Rohit has been saving money all this while to fulfil his dream of owning a car and a house. He has decided to buy the car when it will be available. After fixing an appointment with a real estate broker, he told the broker about his need of a decent apartment in the range of Rs 30-35 lakh in Delhi. “This broker just looked with pity, laughed and said it is impossible to get a two-bedroom apartment in this range. He told me that to own such a house I would need at least Rs 60-80 lakhs. My hopes were dashed to smithereens. I just couldn't imagine that for a two bedroom apartment I would have to pay this much,” says Handa. “And from where can I get this much money.”

This middle-class engineer is not the only one who is feeling the heat of rapidly shooting real estate prices. He, like thousands of others, has been running from pillar to post in search of affordable houses, but in vain. Owning a house in Delhi or any other metro has become an impossibility for the so-called rising, upwardly mobile classes. “Even if I decide to go for a loan of Rs 60 lakh, me and my wife will have to part away with 60 per cent of our salary every month on EMIs and I just can't afford that. So the only option left is to live in a rented house and shift to some other smaller town after our retirement,” rues Handa.  

Vikram Ahuja, owner of Ahuja Realty in Saket, says, "A lot of people come to me and enquire about flats in the range of Rs 30-40 lakh and I have to tell them that there are no flats available in Delhi at such rates. Forget about Delhi, no such flats are available in Gurgaon as well." This story is not confined only to Delhi. Several other metros (see box) have also witnessed a quantum leap in real estate prices of late. Housing has become a nightmarish phenomenon for urban residents with modest salaries.

While several new small townships are mushrooming near 'Tier-I Cities' (Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai etc), they lack infrastructure. The ones which do, they come with a hefty price tag. Many speculators have invested money in real estate and have blocked houses which they sell after the prices shoot up. “More than 50 per cent of houses and flats in Dwarka and NCR region are being used for speculative purposes. Delhi still has genuine buyers and sellers but I cant predict the future as a lot of NRI’s and rich businessmen from India and abroad are eyeing Delhi as their next destination. If these 50 per cent houses are released the prices of property will definetely fall,” informs Harpreet Singh of Property Vertical in New Delhi.

Hence, the only option available for burgeoning middle and lower income groups is to move to 'Tier-2 and Tier-3 Cities' (smaller towns like Pune, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Nagpur, etc), which have lesser job and career options.

Sarabjeet Kaur is a school teacher and a single mother and has been living in a one-room flat for past nine years. She says,“I have been saving money for two reasons: primarily for my daughters’ marriage and secondly to buy a house where I can spend my old age.” When she enquired about flats in Delhi, she got a shock of her life. No flat in Delhi or even NCR costed below Rs 50 lakhs and hence she decided to dump the idea and is uncertain about her old-age.