Bahria Town and a US investment group signed an memorandum of understanding (MoU) for $15 to 20 billion investment on Monday.

Former Chairman of Bahria Town Malik Riaz and US investment group Thomas Kramer inked the MoU on behalf of their respective companies for the Bodha Island City project.

Under the project Bahria Town in collaboration with the foreign companies associated with prominent US investor Thomas Kramer would construct the world’s tallest building and a number of other projects some 3.5-kilometres off the Karachi shore.

Malik Riaz speaking on the occasion said that if he is given a chance he would make Pakistan into Dubai and Europe, He said that the project would help provide employment to the unemployed and this in turn would help eliminate terrorism. He said that we would continue to invest in Pakistan despite all odds and we are in talks with foreign investors. Read more

ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – Real estate developers and investors Bahria Town and a US investment group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) over a number of projects including development of safe city island and construction of world’s tallest building in Karachi.

Bahria Town in collaboration with the foreign companies would construct the world’s tallest building and Bodha Islanad City some 3.5-kilometres off the Karachi shore.

Bodha City Island, which covers 12,000 acres of land, will be developed within five years and it would be linked with Karachi through a six-lane bridge.

A spokesman for Bahria Town said that project would create 2.5 million jobs, whereas, the island will have 125,000 houses. Read more

ISLAMABAD, Dec 28: An additional sessions judge, Islamabad on Friday admitted a petition, seeking criminal case against property tycoon Malik Riaz, his son Ali Riaz and police officials for allegedly implicating the petitioner in a murder case.

Judge Wajid Ali, on the petition filed by Dr Shafiqur Rehman, owner of Allied Developers, a private construction company, issued notices to Malik Riaz, his son Ali Riaz, two inspectors of Islamabad police, Ahmed Kamal and Younis Gujjar, and directed them to submit their reply by January 8.

According to the petition, a Bahria Town security guard, Fayyaz, was murdered on August 14, 2008 in a clash with the security staff of a private housing scheme, Eden Garden.

Besides nominating the original culprits, Malik Riaz decided to implicate his business rivals in the murder case to blackmail them into surrendering their land to him.

Initially, the petition said, BT’s security supervisor Shaukat Ali got an FIR registered against 13 employees of Eden Garden as well as 70 unknown people on August 14, 2008 accusing them of murdering the security guard.

The petition alleged that after one year of the murder of the security guard, Malik Riaz met Dr Shafiq and suggested him to surrender 900 kanals located adjacent to Bahria Town phase I to VII near G.T. Road, Rawalpindi. But Dr Shafiq refused. Read more

A glut of new real estate developments in Lahore over the past five years has created a housing surplus in the city, keeping prices throughout much of the provincial capital largely stagnant, according to new data released by Zameen.com.

As a precursor to creating a real estate price index, Zameen.com, one of the largest real estate websites in Pakistan, has compiled data on average real estate prices for Lahore since it began tracking data in 2007. The data is based on land and house price listings on Zameen.com. While the website is not able to keep track of actual sale prices of each property listed, the trends in listing prices are often a useful proxy for actual prices. It was this data that was shared with The Express Tribune and it does not paint a pretty picture for real estate investors in the city.

Average land prices in most middle class neighbourhoods in Lahore increased by a meagre 2.79% per year during the past five years, according to the data. During that time, inflation averaged 13.83% per year, meaning that most people who invested in land in the provincial capital lost money in real terms. Any property price increase they saw was wiped away by inflation.

House prices fared only marginally better, with the average price of a home in a middle or upper-middle income neighbourhood in Lahore increasing by a meagre 3.73% per year during the past five years, again well below inflation. Read more

KARACHI:

A glut of new real estate developments in Lahore over the past five years has created a housing surplus in the city, keeping prices throughout much of the provincial capital largely stagnant, according to new data released by Zameen.com.

As a precursor to creating a real estate price index, Zameen.com, one of the largest real estate websites in Pakistan, has compiled data on average real estate prices for Lahore since it began tracking data in 2007. The data is based on land and house price listings on Zameen.com. While the website is not able to keep track of actual sale prices of each property listed, the trends in listing prices are often a useful proxy for actual prices. It was this data that was shared with The Express Tribune and it does not paint a pretty picture for real estate investors in the city.

Average land prices in most middle class neighbourhoods in Lahore increased by a meagre 2.79% per year during the past five years, according to the data. During that time, inflation averaged 13.83% per year, meaning that most people who invested in land in the provincial capital lost money in real terms. Any property price increase they saw was wiped away by inflation.

House prices fared only marginally better, with the average price of a home in a middle or upper-middle income neighbourhood in Lahore increasing by a meagre 3.73% per year during the past five years, again well below inflation.

There was, nonetheless, some significant variation within house prices. The average 1,210-square-yard (two kanals, in local parlance) house in middle and upper-middle income neighbourhoods in Lahore saw its prices rise by only 3.42% per year during the five years between 2007 and 2012. The average price increase for a one kanal (605 square yard) house in those neighbourhoods rose by an even worse 2.35% per year, according to Zameen.com’s data.

Property prices towards the lower end of the spectrum – 10 marlas (303 square yards) – rose by an average of 5.3% per year during the period covered by Zameen.com’s data, which suggests that demand among the lower end of the middle class remains more robust.

These property price growth rates are not the entirety of a real estate investor’s returns on his or her investment, of course. There is also rental yield, the annual rent received from a property divided by its total price. Data on the rental yields in Lahore are not currently available, but it seems highly unlikely that yields would be high enough to beat the inflation rate over the past five years.

It is also important to recognise that the averages do not mean that any individual investor would not have been able to beat inflation, or even make good money. Indeed, the data suggests that patterns across Lahore are far from uniform.

Buyers of property in Bahria Town, Valencia Housing Society, and Wapda Town saw their property prices increase by an average of 10.76%, 8.06%, and 7.68% per year respectively. Somewhat surprisingly, Gulberg houses fared the worst: prices actually declined even in nominal terms by an average of 7.66% per year, though in that case, it may simply be that the higher-end properties in Gulberg are no longer on sale and thus no longer show up in the average for the neighbourhood.
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LAHORE: After carrying out a detailed survey of approved private housing schemes in the provincial metropolis, the Town Planning Wing of Lahore Development Authority (LDA) has issued notices to the owners who have constructed their houses without approval of building plans or in contravention of approved plans, for getting their constructions regularised within one week. Failure at the part of owners will invoke legal action against their buildings after this period.

LDA has issued notices to the houses situated in PIA Housing Society, Awasia Housing Society, Air Lines Housing Society, Architect and Engineers Housing Society, Punjab Government Employees Cooperative Housing Society, PCSIR Staff Society Phase-2, Iqbal Avenue Phase-1, NFC Employees Society Phase-1, UET Society, Eden Value Homes, River Edge, Chanar Bagh, Army Welfare Trust Society, Fazaiya Housing Society, Central Park, Elite Town, Bahria Town, Valencia Town, Engineers Town, Khayaban-e-Amin, Tricon Valley, Sukh Chain Garden, Aitcheson College Society and Punjab University Employees Cooperative Housing Society.

Meanwhile, staff of the Commercialisation Directorate of the LDA sealed as many as 25 properties on College Road, Township on Thursday as they had not deposited the commercialisation fee despite being served repeated notices in this regard. staff report Read more

LAHORE, Dec 13: Following a detailed survey on the construction of illegally-constructed houses by owners of various approved housing societies/schemes in the provincial metropolis, the Lahore Development Authority on Thursday issued notices to developers of over 20 schemes for doing so without getting houses/building plans/drawings approved from the competent authority.

The residential schemes/societies whose owners constructed houses include PIA Housing Society, Awasia Housing Society, Air Lines Housing Society, Architect and Engineers Housing Society, Punjab Government Employees Cooperative Housing Society, PCSIR Staff Society Phase-2, Iqbal Avenue Phase-1, NFC Employees Society Phase-1, UET Society, Eden Value Homes, River Edge, Chanar Bagh, Army Welfare Trust Society, Fazaiya Housing Society, Central Park, Elite Town, Bahria Town, Valencia Town, Engineers Town, Khayaban-e-Amin, Tricon Valley, Sukh Chain Garden, Aitchison College Society and Punjab University Employees Cooperative Housing Society.

According to an LDA spokesman, the LDA administration has also directed the developers to get their houses/building plans approved from the authority within a week failing which a legal action against them will be taken.

Meanwhile, the LDA commercialization wing has abolished the temporary commercialization system/policy, issuing notices to dozens of buildings’ owners for getting their properties commercialized permanently at 48 commercial declared roads. Read more

ISLAMABAD, Dec 6: The Capital Development Authority (CDA) did not provide relevant record regarding alleged encroachment on 1,200 kanals by Bahria Town to the Shoaib Suddle commission, it has been learnt.

Documents available with Dawn showed that the one-man commission investigating the alleged corruption by Arslan Iftikhar, the son of Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, had on November 26 taken suo motu notice of a news item regarding alleged grabbing of the CDA land by Bahria Town.

According to the news story, Bahria Town had encroached on the 1,200 kanals worth Rs7 billion near Kurri village and sold the land in its Bahria Enclave scheme launched in July last year.The commission directed the CDA to submit a report regarding retrieval of the grabbed or encroached land by November 30.

On November 30, Barrister Masroor Shah, the chief legal adviser to the civic agency, informed the commission through a letter that submission of the required record was not possible within the deadline. The letter added: “It would not be possible to submit the report within the stipulated time since the relevant record is under scrutiny of the honourable commission headed by Justice (retired) Mohammad Sardar Raza Khan, constituted by Islamabad High Court (IHC) on October 15, 2012.” The CDA requested the Suddle commission to extend the deadline for submission of the record.

Subsequently, the deadline was extended to December 5, whereas the mandate of the commission was to expire on December 6. The CDA, however, did not submit the record to the commission with this deadline.

Interestingly, IHC order of October 15, according to which the Sardar Raza commission was constituted, did not mention the encroachment or grabbing of the 1,200 kanals. This particular matter was not under the scrutiny of the commission either.Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the IHC, while hearing identical petitions of Niazullah Niazi, Babar Awan and Barrister Zafarullah Khan, had constituted the three-member commission and assigned it the scrutiny of CDA projects, including Monal Restaurant, construction of I.J.P. Road, allotment of a plot to a private firm for construction of a five-star hotel, and the Kuri model village.

Additional sessions judge Pervaizul Qadir Memon, who is also the focal person for the Sardar Raza commission, told Dawn that the commission had not summoned the record related to encroachment/grabbing of 1,200 kanals.

After examining the project, the commission would seek the record of other projects, he added.

Despite repeated attempts, CDA spokesman Ramzan Sajid could not be contacted for comments. Barrister Masroor Shah, the chief legal adviser to the civic agency, said the IHC had also assigned the commission the scrutiny of a road which leads to Bahria Enclave.

He said Sardar Raza commission would require the same documents Suddle commission had sought; therefore, the authority had asked for time for submitting the relevant record.

Justice (retired) Wajihuddin Ahmed, when contacted for comments, said if the record of a particular matter was summoned by more than one commissions, the priority would be given to the commission whose term was going to expire first. He said the Suddle commission was working under a tight deadline and the CDA should have provided it with the required record on a priority basis because its mandate was to expire on December 6.

He said in case CDA had already submitted the record to Sardar Raza commission it could provide the other commission the certified copies of the required record.He, however, said the CDA had shown a casual approach while dealing with the commission constituted by the superior courts, adding the executive might have played an invisible role in this situation Read more

ISLAMABAD – Though the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has submitted a report to the Suddle Commission which states that around 1,400 kanals of civic agency’s land located in Zone-IV has been encroached by Bahria Town, in the meantime independent observers are questioning if the encroachment issue has any connection with Riaz-Arslan graft scandal.

The one-man Commission appointed by the Supreme Court to probe Malik Riaz and Dr Arslan’s alleged business deal sought a detailed report from the Capital Development Authority the other day.

The CDA was asked to inform the status of land near the proposed Kurri Model Village and if the Bahria Town had encroached upon the land than what steps so far the Authority had taken to retrieve its land.

The Commission has sought the report in the backdrop of a recent revelation made by CDA Counsel Nazir Jawad that Bahria Town had encroached upon 1,200 kanals of land near the Kurri village before the Islamabad High Court during the course of proceedings on November 14, 2012.

In report, CDA has admitted that 1400 kanals of its land located in Zone-IV and near the CDA’s Park Enclave and Kuri Village has been encroached by Bahria Town.

“In the report we have mentioned two ways how CDA would resolve the encroachment issue with the Bahria Town. Bahria Town will be given two options, either to vacate the land or pay the price of encroached land,” said an official who prepared report.

“Bahria Town will be charged Rs 12 million per Kanal. It is the same price that the Authority has earlier charged against one kanal of land in the Park Enclave,” official said. This shows that according to CDA’s estimates Bahria Town has encroached land worth Rs 16.8 billion. Read more

ISLAMABAD – There are only briefings, discussions, decisions and directives but there is nothing concrete on ground. That is all, when it comes to much-neglected development of Park Enclave – a posh housing society inaugurated by the former Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani on July 5, 2011 and is supposed to complete through February 2013.

One can imagine the level of responsibility the city managers – who are taken as responsible for providing better housing facilities to the residents of the federal capital – feel that only three months are left to meet their own selected deadline but so far the Authority even could not succeed to make the proposed colony site free of encroachments.

The situation has furthered the reservations of investors and overseas Pakistanis, who have already refused to pay instalments of plots anymore until visible development on the site. Read more