REHAB seeks steps to boost secondary real estate market

Realtors yesterday demanded cuts in registration tax on sales of used flats to inject some life into real-estate business.
Registration costs of both new and used flats are the same, although the prices of apartments vary considerably between the two.
As a result, the customers feel discouraged to purchase the used flats.
“So, we want to develop a secondary market in the country for real estate, like the secondary car sales market,” said Alamgir Shamsul Alamin, president of Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh, at a meeting with Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed at his secretariat office in Dhaka.
Alamin led a delegation of the newly elected committee of REHAB to a meeting with the minister.
Real estate is in the doldrums as the sales of apartments and plots fell around 60 percent in 2013 from the previous year, Alamin said.
Real estate developers urged the government to set up a Tk 3,000 crore fund to disburse as loans on single digit interest rates.
With the revival of real estate, backward linkage industries such as cement, rod, furniture, ceramics and paints will also get a boost, he said.