Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants
Redevelopment is a fact of life in any ageing, land-starved metropolitan city. In India, no city defines this dynamic quite as accurately as Mumbai.
The conventional norm of redevelopment in India involves appointing developers to redevelop old and dilapidated housing projects.
However, several housing societies in Mumbai are now contemplating self-redevelopment instead. We can dispense with the usual metaphor ‘not as easy as it sounds’ – this does not sound easy by any definition, and it isn’t.
Broadly, some homeowner groups are now taking the route of appointing their own architects, contractors and project management consultants to execute the redevelopment of their projects.
These can be single stand-alone buildings or housing societies of more than one building. For funding self-redevelopment, the owner collective will invariably opt for bank loans.
The Benefits of Self-Redevelopment
For redevelopment by any means, homeowner groups are motivated by the prospect of larger, more secure homes with vastly improved facilities and amenities.
The only reason why a developer would undertake redevelopment is obviously that he gets a massive stake in the whole undertaking.