Buy property before guidance value goes up in April

 If you are planning to invest in immovable property, do so before March 31. The department of Stamps and Registration is all set to effect an upward revision of property guidance value by 10 to 15 per cent from April this year, which will send registration fee spiralling.

With the inauspicious period -- Dhanur Masa/Shoonya Masa (as per the Hindu lunar calendar) ending, realty experts feel that it would be best to go in for investments in the next three months. They contend that once the guidance value is increased, housing loans and the interest component would also get inflated, translating to higher EMIs.

The department, which has been revising the guidance value annually since 2012, deferred it last year owing to a slump in the real estate market. It continued to levy the revised rates of December 2014, bringing some relief to both property buyers and sellers. The guidance value is the minimum price below which any immovable property cannot be registered.

Though the department had issued a draft notification in September 2015 for a hike in guidance value, it developed cold feet at the last minute, especially after it received over 200 objections to the proposed revision. It feared that a revision at that juncture would not even bring in the expected revenue.

However, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was not happy that the revision had been stalled. On January 14, he reviewed the targets achieved by the department and asked the officials to follow the calendar.

Sources said, when officials proposed to effect the revision from the next financial year, Siddaramaiah, who is driving hard to beef up the revenues of all departments, directed them to go for it immediately.

The officials had to go to great lengths to convince the Chief Minister that revenue mobilisation would take a hit if the guidance value is revised during this financial year. They reasoned that realty prices were already high, and consequently there would be a lull in registration between January and March.