1.Lending rates may fall before RBI’s rate cut, says SBI. 02/02/2012
State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, said interest rates may ease before the central bank reduces the policy rates, as higher rates have started hurting the industry. “Rates are high and obviously it is hurting the industry. We are all hoping for that (lending rates to fall). In the long term, one of the things that will make industry viable and investment come back is to have lower lending rates,” Diwakar Gupta, managing director and chief financial officer of SBI, said on Wednesday. Read More

2.Pune land scam: CBI raids former vice-chief of Army. 02/02/2012
Pune: The CBI on Tuesday raided the residences of former vice-chief of army staff Lt Gen (retd) Noble Thamburaj and former defence estates officer (DEO) of Pune circle S R Nayyar, and the office of Kalpataru Builders in connection with alleged irregularities in the development of defence land in Pune cantonment. Thamburaj, one of the seniormost officers of the armed forces to have been indicted by a CBI inquiry, was the Southern Army commander based in Pune when the agreement with the company was allegedly signed. In a release, CBI said Thamburaj and Nayyar had “shown favour to M/s Kalpatru in the matter of property at Bungalow No 8A, Lothian Road… and measuring area 0.96 acres of B-3 defence land at Pune cantonment”. Read More

3.MCG starts process of taking over colonies from builders. 02/02/2012
GURGAON: The Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) has initiated the process of taking over private colonies from private builders after repeated complaints by the councillors and residents about the pathetic condition of facilities provided by these builders. According to the municipal commissioner, a report detailing all the colonies has been sent to the state government and, once the formalities are over, these areas will come under the ambit of the MCG. “According to the rules, the private builders have to hand over the colonies to the civic agencies after five years from the time they receive the completion certificate. However, almost all of them have flouted the rules and have not handed them over to us even though some of these colonies are over two decades old. We will soon ask each of them to submit a list of facilities they are providing to the residents and will set a date for them to hand over the colonies to us. The basic reason why they delay in giving them to us is because they don’t want to earn from the maintenance fees they collect from the residents,” said an official. This should come as a relief to the residents and those councillors who represent their wards. Read More

4.‘Luxury home prices plunge in Mumbai’. 02/02/2012
Mumbai: The high-end residential market in the country’s financial capital has witnessed the steepest fall in prices in a survey of global cities over the last one year even though average property prices in the city continue to be considered unreasonably high. According to the prime global cities index by property consultants Knight Frank that tracks luxury residential trends in 23 key global cities, the Mumbai luxury market has registered the maximum dip at 18 per cent. Read More

5.Evade stamp duty, pay 10-fold fine. 02/02/2012
Undervaluing your property to avoid paying full stamp duty could earn you a penalty 10 times that amount. A property owner in northwest Delhi’s Pitampura, who tried to save Rs 29 lakh by this method, will now have to pay a Rs 3.22-crore penalty. That’s not all. An FIR has been registered against him and has been sent to the economic offences wing of the Delhi Police. The buyer bought the property at the market price of Rs 5.37 crore. But after making a deal with the seller, a sale deed was registered at the office of the sub-registrar of Pitampura last year for just Rs 48 lakh. Read More

6.No construction allowed in notified Haryana areas. 02/02/2012
No construction can be carried out in the urban and notified areas of Kurukshetra, Ladwa, Pehowa and Shahabad without permission of the Haryana Town & Country Planning Department, officials said here on Tuesday. Stating that some property dealers were misleading people and selling plots in unauthorised colonies by claiming that these would be regularised after removing encroachments, they made it clear that “such colonies would not be regularised till a written order was issued by the State Government”. Read More

7.Octogenarian moves HC against AAI eviction notice. 02/02/2012
Mumbai: An octogenarian, who claims to own land estimated to be worth Rs 2,000 crore adjoining the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Sahar, has moved the Bombay High Court challenging a showcause notice issued by the Airport Authority of India (AAI). The AAI initiated action to evict Edward Machado (82) from the seven acres he claims to possess. Read More

8.CBI charges Emaar with financial irregularities. 02/02/2012
Delhi-based real estate developer Emaar MGF has been accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly committing financial irregularities through stated sale of plots at grossly undervalued price in the 358.36-acre joint venture Emaar Hills Township Project (EHTPL) in Hyderabad. While the accusations center around the sale of villa plots covering 36 acres, the CBI says that the larger scam involves the reduction of the equity stake of the state-owned Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) to 6.5 per cent from the original 26 per cent in the project. Read More

9.India’s SBI to sell UK home loans. 30/01/2012
SBI came under scrutiny for offering “teaser” home loan rates, which are initially low but then escalate, to domestic customers in 2011, leading the Indian regulator to fear the country might experience a repeat of the US subprime loan crisis. The bank said that it planned to take a conservative approach to lending overseas. Read More

10.Ashiana enters Gujarat housing mkt; ties up 11 acre for proj. 30/01/2012
New Delhi: Realty firm Ashiana Housing, which focuses on developing homes for elderly people, has entered into an agreement with a land owner to develop a housing project in Gujarat. The Delhi-based company plans to develop up to 500 housing units under the project at Halol in Gujarat at an estimated cost of about Rs 60 crore. Read More