The Telangana government is considering changes in norms for layout development in HMDA limits. 

Due to the recent COVID 19 pandemic HMDA's revenues falling rapidly, the municipal administration department mull tweaks in HMDA norms. The department to allow layouts with 40 feet widened road instead of 100 feet to the extent of less than 10 acres. HMDA finding ways and means to attract more applicants because revenue would fall again and the real estate sectors witness a slowdown.

The total revenue used to be about Rs 600 crore per year with a monthly average of Rs 50 crore. Now, in the last two months, Rs 20 crore has fallen. It is likely to fall further in the coming months. Major HMDA revenue comes from building and layout permits and 10% from apartment rents and municipal park fees. While there has been an improvement in the construction activity with almost Rs 550 crore revenue, income from the layout permits has decreased.

HMDA officials are still working on relaxations that need to be extended for layout permissions and looking for the best possible way to keep the future projects in mind. As the construction and real estate sector set to take some more time to recover.

Modified HMDA Layout Norms

As per the new building and layout guidelines, HMDA layouts should have a 30 or 40 feet road width in Hyderabad and nearby districts. But since last year, the HMDA has been insisting on a road width of 100 feet to allow layouts over 10 acres. As a result, several hundred layout files kept stacking up, and this has had an impact on layout development. Also led to the rapid expansion of illegal layouts in the surrounding districts of Hyderabad.

As per the development permission management system, HMDA  has received only 1,324 open layout applications in the last one-and-a-half years, of those 846 have been approved. Now in the current year 2020-21, there are just 100 applications for layouts and buildings.

HMDA, which has undertaken projects such as the Balanagar flyover, has met its expenditure by auctioning its land, such as the Uppal Bhagat layout plots. But, because of the pandemic and its impact on the real estate sector, it is stopped in its tracks and can not press ahead with land auctions. In the last three months, the city Authority has been able to acquire a meagre Rs 1 crore. Revenues through layout permissions lowered to Rs 20 crore in 2019-20 from Rs 80 crore in 2018-19.

However, with the modifications in HMDA layout norms would encourage people to adopt planned layout development which is expected to improve the real estate sector.

By: Shailaja K