BIRATNAGAR, June 4: As more people started migrating to Biaratnagar for safety reasons, transactions of real estate in this eastern trading hub have almost doubled over the last six months, despite banks´ tighter lending policy and soaring lending rates.
Officials at Land Revenue Office, Morang, attributed the trend in the market, which is quite opposite to the situation in other major cities of the country, to increased migration, whereby thousands of people have continued to move out of mid-eastern Tarai districts to Biratnagar to escape terror of armed groups and poor governance.
This has caused the prices of land skyrocket in core city areas, said Gopal Bhattarai of Biratnagar Housing Service, a real estate company. Apart from the impact on price, the migration has also sparked land pooling and plotting in the areas adjoined to the city.
“The trend of land development and plotting has jumped dramatically in recent months in Biaratnagar,” said Govinda Pokharel of Birat Housing Service, another housing company.
Madhusudan Pokharel, chief of the Land Revenue Office, told myrepublica.com that real estate dealers have mushroomed in the city of late and they are fragmenting even the cultivable land, developing it as residential plots for sales to tap the rising demands.
Prices of new residential plots developed in such cultivable lands, which are located just outside of city area, have touched Rs 1 million per kattha (3559.70 square feet).
Increased transactions have also led to the expansion of the city and development of new residential areas. New housing companies have emerged in the market and they are leading the expansion of city and land prices.
Because the developers guarantee road linkages, electricity, drinking water and sewerage channels up to the plots, the migrants have preferred to buy land from them, instead of buying land and arranging the facilities on their own.
As for the city core, developers said prices of land have jumped up to as much as Rs 40 million per kattha on either side of the main road in the city.
Owing to such rise in transactions, Land Revenue Office has collected Rs 140 million in revenues from new land and housing trade over the first nine months of the current fiscal year.
“The collection is more than double from the collection during the same period last year,” said Pokharel. The office had collected just Rs 68.3 million in revenues from new transactions in the same period last year.