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Bringing relief to homebuyers, GDA extends repayment period for its properties
The Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) on Thursday gave its nod on extending the repayment period for homebuyers who either buy GDA flats through housing schemes or who acquire authority’s properties through auctions.
Authority officials said the decision is likely to attract more homebuyers and will help GDA resolve its fund’s crunch issue.
The decision was taken in a board meeting held at GDA headquarters on Thursday. The board meeting was chaired by the divisional commissioner (Meerut), Anita C Mesham, who is also the chairperson of the authority.
“The proposal for extending the repayment period of sold properties has been approved by the board and it has been done to attract middle-class homebuyers. The decision will become applicable for any new allotment done by the GDA through any of the housing schemes. The cancellation procedure for the properties will, however, remain the same and no changes have been made to it,” Meshram said.
According to the proposal, the authority currently has about 59 unsold properties spread over 2,000 square metres each and their total estimated worth is over ₹1,400 crore. Likewise, there are 421 unsold properties, spread below 2,000 square metres each, and are valued at about ₹ 90 crore.
The other unsold GDA properties include about 1,903 flats of different categories. These flats are valued at about ₹791 crore. Overall, the GDA at present has unsold properties worth around ₹2,281 crore.
Meanwhile, the properties with defaulters are valued at around ₹350 crore, and the authority is facing issues with the recovery of the default amount from the allottees.
“Considering all these factors, we decided to extend the repayment period and this will help attract homebuyers. We had also proposed to reduce the prices of our properties, but initially, we will go ahead with the extended repayment period and check the progress,” Kanchan Verma, authority’s vice-chairperson, said.
According to the proposal cleared on Thursday, the allottees given flats under GDA housing schemes are required to pay 20% to the authority on allotment, while the rest of the amount is to be paid in instalments.
The repayment period of 20 years for the economically weaker sections (EWS) has remained unchanged. The repayment period for lower-income group(LIG), mini middle-income group (MIG) and MIG flats have now been increased from three years to 10 years.
Likewise, the repayment period for higher-income groups (HIG) and multi-storeyed flats has now been increased from three years to seven years. A 7.5% simple interest will be levied on all the repayments like before.
For flats/plots which are put to auction, the two years repayment period for the LIG and mini MIG has been extended to 10 years.
“There is also a proposal under which the GDA had proposed to hike the cost of flats and plots which were already allotted in its Madhuban Bapudham scheme. The proposal could not be accepted as the board members had raised some objections. The proposal has been put on hold for now, and will be reworked at a later stage,” Meshram added.
The GDA had paid an additional amount of about ₹1,100 crore as land compensation to farmers of Madhuban Bapudham housing scheme. The GDA wanted to recover the additional cost from the homebuyers by increasing the prices of the flats in the housing society.