Soon there would be more tall villages in Chennai due to relaxation in FSI norms
Posted on: 09/Nov/2018 9:42:57 AM
It is well known that the term FSI or Floor Space Index refers to the ratio of land area to build up area. This FSI and premium FSI norms would be relaxed soon was announced by the state government recently and it grabbed the attention of many. It is now revealed that this relaxation could result in the old apartment complexes as well as housing board complexes getting redeveloped. This could lead to change in the skyline in the Chennai city.
Chennai now has got many low rise apartment complexes and independent houses. The sensational piece of news is the relaxation in FSI and premium FSI could result in many tall villages and disappearance of low rise apartments and independent houses in Chennai city. Many people move out of Chennai in search of housing stocks is known. Soon this trend would change as more people would be attracted to the Chennai city with better civic infrastructure.
Mr. S. Sridharan, vice-president of Credai or Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India, Chennai chapter, expressed his views and spoke about how for both apartment owners as well as for developers re-development is a win-win proposition.
According to Mr. Habib who is the president of Credai, Chennai, all over the world the government are finding it difficult to fulfil increasing housing demands in the cities. He later explained how high cost of living in the cities is creating huge problems for majority of people. The increasing in FSI is the only way to lower the prices and to make housing affordable to a common man. He added that the government had taken the right step in this aspect for the sake of many people. Mr. Habib later threw light on how end users prefer high rise buildings as these buildings have got better ventilation, lighting plus other facilities like more open space, landscaping, multi-level car parking, rainwater harvesting, safety amenities etc.
Vice-president of Credai, Chennai, Mr Sridharan later spoke about how all TN housing board properties lend themselves for redevelopment as they have underachieved FSI with some having as low as 0.8 FSI also. Real estate analyst, Mr. W. Matthews spoke about how those apartment complexes promoted by the private developers that are 25 to 30 years old and maintained poorly could come up for re-development. He later hinted that the apartment values could double after redevelopment. The capital values of the apartment complexes are very low for their localities are well known. Later Mr. Matthews explained about how the FSI benefits are more for the multi-storeyed building or MSB compliant plots. In case of low rise buildings the increase in FSI was around 0.8 whereas for MSBs it was 1.375. He then spoke about how for the high rise buildings that were constructed before the year 2009, the increase in FSI was higher at 2.375. He finally highlighted how the financially sound owners could do re-development on their own but they would face many issues in getting clearances from more than a dozen agencies.
It is now brought out that since the minimum area of 1500 square metres of land is essential for developing a high rise building many smaller properties on arterial roads could also join for re-development. One important point is re-development not only provides new buildings with efficiency and more space but also provides safety from earthquakes and tremorors etc.
