Own a House in Metropolitan Chennai

The feel of owning a house makes us feel proud and all of us will devise a plan to built/buy a house of our choice that suits our pocket.What are the difficulties we currenlty face when we try to freeze a house of our choice in a metro like Chennai? Who are the various people cashing in on the Real estate market and making a huge cut in our had earned money. I am just sharing my thoughts and some scenarios I have witnessed / heard based on my experience with the Chennai real estate market since I bought a house in 2003.

In olden days a property consultant is a person who mediates between the seller and the buyer and gets a meagre amount as fees for his consulting. He also ensures that the deal is beneficial to both the parties and owns responsibility. He builts a reputation to ensure that he gets more business.

Come 2007 was the boom for real estate market when every one beelined to buy a nest for them to dwell and the prices sky rocketed from where it was in the start of 2000. An individual house/posh residential apartment in a decent locality which costed 15-20 Lacs has increased four fold. Have the factors associated with the construction risen so huge? No way, the major contribution to the rise is the middle man/power agent (so called property consultant) who flush in money into real estate market to make huge profits in short term. When you approcah a property consultant for buying a property the first question they ask:

What is your Budget?

Now the trap is laid for you that they overestimate the value of the property and then reduce some (negotiation) and completes the deal. However you might have overpaid and increased the market value in that area. All other properties will be sold with your deal as the benchmark.

Who is not a property consultant?

I am just listing different people who are self proclaiming them as property consultants/middle man

1. Auto Driver
2.Vegetable vendor
3. Dhobi
4. Lawyers
5.Retired officials
6. IT crowd (in some cases)
7. Jobless youth

Have I missed any? If so, I haven't come across them

They believe that cahing in on real estate market is the easiest way to make quick money(with tax exemption).

Apartments for sale-the Builder chain

A mason with 10 years of experience and have done 3-4 above said deal becomes a builder and starts building apartments. I have seen a lot of such second rated apartments which are far below benchmark in quality and durability, however the prices are in par with the current market. Is the government taking any steps to ensure the quality and credibality of these small time builders? Hope they need to to avoid any disaster in future..

Puliarai Dakshinamoorthy Temple - A Snapshot

In the southern part of Tamilnadu about 75 KMs from Tirunelveli is Puliarai - A beautiful village in the foot of western ghats adjoining Tamilnadu-My Native. The scerenic beauty of the village will memerise you on the first glance.
The very old Dakshinamoorthy temple is situated in Puliarai very close to the mountains. It is a temple of old cultural heritage and the Lord Dakshinamoorthy (Guru) is very powerful. This is the only temple in the world where Lord Dakshinamoorthy is situated between 'Nandhi' and the idol of 'Lord Shiva'- All in one line. One can view Shiva through the horns of the 'Nandhi' and Dakshinamoorthy-This is said to be of unique in nature.

Thursdays and Saturdays are very special for lord Dakshinamoorthy and people beeline to Puliarai on these days to have a glance of the god and seek his blessings.

Puliarai is about 10 KM from Shencottah.You can reach Puliarai by road if you get down at Tenkasi or Shencottah.Would encourage you all to visit Puliarai once in your life time and get the blessings of Lord Dakshinamoorthy.Other temples near by are Aryankavu Aiyappan temple,Tenkasi Kasi viswanathar temple.

Increasing Trend of Cyber Addiction

Cybernet or Internet is the buzz word which has changed and modernized the way we live, work, shop and communicate/talk.Come 2000, we saw cyber cafes/browsing centers emerging across streets in India in contrast to today where most of us are connected to the cyberworld via blackberry or SMART phone (Even chinese in same cases).
       Its a good sign that technology has made our life easier by making everything available in a click of a button. However we also need to think about the number of child users who are using the internet daily and the increasing number of cyber crimes  which has increased the need for more and more cyber security.Although we are aware of the risks of cyber usage, we are still encouraging and getting more and more addicted towards it. I have seen people who will go mad if they are not allowed to log into social networking sites for a day.
    Cyber addiction has made our personal data easily vulnerable to hackers and phishers as we have our history with photos in social networking sites which makes their life easier.We need to act swift to arrive at a point where we can balance ourselves....Thoughts please

Are you a Manager or Damager?

Friends,
I have written a blog in this topic in Management Scholars Academy blog. Here goes the link.
http://msacademy.in/wordpress/management-scholars-academy-blog/2011/01/are-you-a-manager-or-damager-guest-post-by-sethuramalingam-b/