Realtors shift focus to smaller towns

The action in real estate development arena is now gradually shifting to small cities and semi-urban towns from the bigger cities.

Smaller cities like Shillong, Noida, Dehradun and Rajkot reported higher credit offtake as compared to bigger cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

"The future of housing is in towns as the big cities are reaching saturation point. Small business centres, agricultural mandi and industrial clusters will be the upcoming places as far as real estate development is concerned," S C Sharma, executive director, Hudco said.

Speaking at a seminar on "The Future of Housing Development - Scope and Opportunity" Sharma said with the deceleration of industrial credit, banks and financial institutions like Hudco were going all out to deploy fund in this sector with the ultimate beneficiary being consumers.

"Reserve Bank of India data reveals that bank's exposure to this area contribute 12 per cent of their total portfolio," he added.

Harsh Neotia, managing director of Ambuja Cement Eastern Ltd emphasised the point of developing social housing.

"We need to cross subsidise and build home for lower and middle income group people," he said in the seminar.