AP govt land rate hike affects registration of properties

Registration of properties began on a dull note with over 5,700 stampings done by 5 pm on Thursday against the daily average of nearly 8,000 across the state.Notably, the state government has taken up a special revision of the market values of lands in certain areas in both urban and rural locations and also a revision of the structure values all over the state, from this day.

The government issued permission for special revision of market values in areas where there was a huge gap between the open market values and the department-prescribed values.The idea is also to revise the structure values in the state.

The market values of areas and structures are revised by the government in urban areas once a year and in rural areas every two years, in August.This year, it started the special revision of market values in June.

As an announcement had been made about the special revision starting from June 1, people rushed to the sub-registrar offices in the last few days to register their new properties.However, due to some technical glitch in the servers, the number of registrations came down to 7,500.

As for the revision of the market value of structures located in municipal corporation/municipality areas, the value for apartments has been revised to 1,400 per square feet from the earlier rate of 1,280.In Nagar panchayats falling under the urban development authorities, the rate has been revised to 1,200.

IN gram panchayats, the revised rate is 850 per square feet.So is the case with commercial structures, wherein the rate has been revised to 1,700 in municipal areas, 1,450 in Nagar panchayats and 1,000 in gram panchayats per square feet for the ground floor.

A senior official from the registration department said, "The state government has taken up a special revision of market values of certain areas and structures in the state with sole criteria to address variation in prevailing market value and guideline value.This helps improve the sources of revenue to it and there is no uniformity in the percentage of hike in market values." AP Credai state president Y.V.Ramana Rao said, "We have requested the state government to defer revision of market values of areas and structures as the construction industry is in the doldrums, but it went ahead.The buyers of properties bear the brunt of the upward revision of market values as the increased value will be shifted by the sellers to the buyers.".