WHAT ALL TO CONSIDER WHILE LOOKING FOR A NEW HOME !!!

After a lot of searching around for that dream house (physically & on-line) you finally find one! What do you do? Just buy and move into it or you evaluate the other basic social factors too. Of course! There are a lot of factors that need to be taken into account when short-listing a particular property such as Infrastructure, schools, market, hospital etc. What are these basic but the most important factors that should influence your decision when you are looking for a place to settle down or invest in a property. Listed below are a few of these factors:

• Good connectivity:  Well maintained roads, bridges and railways. Commuting to work and back home is a daily routine for most of us and takes a lot of our time. If the ride is smooth, life appears good! A good availability of public transit services is a boon for all
• Strong Tele-communication systems and connectivity:  this is the age of computers, mobiles, satellites and what-not’s.  Everyone has a mobile including the maid, the cleaner etc. so it is very important to have good telecom services and internet connectivity in an area.
• Reliable and affordable energy: all our daily household chores are now being done with the aid of electronic gadgets- washing machines, fridge, microwave, geyser, mixer-grinder, etc. Hence to have regular and uninterrupted power supply is now a necessity.
• Educational institutes: Having good schools and other educational institutes in the neighbourhood is an advantage for both parents and children.
• Good passenger connections to other cities: we all keep moving from one place to another in search of a good job, education, health facilities and more. So good and quick connectivity between different cities is a bonus.
•  High quality water and waste water systems: regular availability of pure and safe drinking water is a must. Also, it is necessary to have a good waste water management system in place to treat water for recycling and also conserving it for the future.
• Sufficient parking: with almost every household having at least one car, and many of us having two cars, a two-wheeler or more, sufficient parking space is a huge concern for the present generation.
•  Quality healthcare facilities: pollution, stress, diseases, allergies are a part of everyday life. Having good healthcare facilities in your locality is very essential for everyone.

These are some of the factors we have suggested but there can be many more and it would also vary from person to person and family to family. Always create that check-list of factors which can make your life smoother and pleasant to live when short-listing place – “a home”. 

INDIAN REAL ESTATE – IS ONLINE THE WAY TO GO……

Just went through some articles on this topic (in newspapers and on-line), thought of sharing few facts from what I could understand:

On-line medium is slowly sinking into Indians mindset; they have started purchasing high value items on-line.This medium seems to be a boon for today's consumers who are so tied up in their professional and personal commitments that it’s almost impossible for them to check things by visiting stores or showrooms, hence they prefer to study, compare and even purchase things on-line, be it a book, grocery or high end jewellery and now of course now its extend to real estate.

Let’s compare benefits and drawbacks for on-line purchase of Real estate. Before we do that let’s understand the real estate sector as a commodity in on-line market;

It involves a built product which is not standardized and varies from developer to developer, area to area ….etc. then there are other factors which influence this decision such as the location of property, the neighbourhood profile, the availability of social infrastructure, accessibility via road rail etc. making this further difficult is to evaluate the developer (his market standing and reputation i.e. brand image) also the cost involved here is much more than as compared to simple on-line transactions of an electronic goods purchases and so on.

What felicitates on-line involvement of customer is of course:

•  It does reduce the hassle of visiting the site office of developer physically and the property can be viewed on-line.
• With major property portals giving real time statistical data in terms of demand of the area, the prevalent rates there and availability; it gives consumer an opportunity to evaluate the purchase.
• A developer’s brand image can also be evaluated based on the testimonials available on-line (in other than his website J).

What restricts these decisions not materializing completely on-line is that:

• We Indians still prefer  the old formats of buying a home which involves visiting a broker, going to the site and experiencing everything first hand and that to in all the projects in short its lack of trust especially when your life savings are involved.
• There have been incidences especially with NRI customers wherein the company projection on-line was fantastic with no bad publicity at all and later it was realized the developer had changed its name for on-line presence.
• On-line gateway is what we Indians are not very comfortable. We need an immediate receipt for the payment made with an individual hand sign on their company seal.

 In short if I have to summarize this debate then it seems that the best for the customer is; do on-line research, short-list property but visit these short-listed property before making any transaction.