Giving the real estate business a digital boost.

Obtaining building approvals is a tedious process. It can take about three months to 2 years for a project to get approvals. Besides, the procedural constraints in receiving manual sanctions drain a developer's time, money, and energy. 

Government initiatives have been encouraging tech adoption to drive businesses digitally. The Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) 2.0 aims to digitize manual processes. This will integrate the central and state-level systems through IT bridges. Operations would be enhanced with single-point access for all citizen-centric services created with this integration. Moreover, the country's vision of a USD 1 trillion digital economy over the next five years will reap immense benefits from large-scale digitization. 

The real estate sector is seeing an accelerated pace of adoption of technology.

Technology is now penetrating all aspects of the real estate sector. Developers, property owners, and office occupiers are pushing boundaries on tech adoption. The pandemic provided a further impetus to tech adoption in real estate. Some states in India, such as Maharashtra and Kerala, have started incorporating digital processes for land regulations and approvals. Digitizing land records and approval processes would improve the sector's ease of transactions, transparency, and efficiency.

Online systems to smoothen the approval process and increase consistency

The Maharashtra government is working on an online system known as the building plan management system (BPMS) under the EoDB initiative of the central government. The system will streamline the process of record maintenance and building approvals of allied components. The online system will likely make the building permission and application tracking process faultless, devoid of manual irregularities. 

BPMS will take about 30 days to approve a building plan from the date of application. Other states, such as Kerala, are also running trials with an Intelligent Building plan management system (IBPMS) with a turnaround time of 4-5 days. Developers believe it would reduce the involvement of middlemen in the approval process and make it more transparent. 

On the other hand, the Maharashtra government will likely adopt the Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) system to identify every surveyed land parcel. Popularly known as 'Aadhar for land,' the system will provide a unique ID number for all the land parcels, old or new, urban or rural. Recently, the Maharashtra government, along with ten other states in India, carried out a pilot project to test the usability of the randomly allotted 11-digit unique identification number (UIN) to a section of land parcels. 

With successful implementation, the unique numbers will effectively be used to reduce fraudulent activities. Combining ULPIN with an online building permission system will create a robust ecosystem that can rationalize the documentation process and make the real estate sector more transparent. This digital transformation will be much more efficient to own, lease, and manage the property.

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