Realty in Chennai should face reality:

Not long ago, Chennai was supposed to one of the most affordable Indian cities to live in. People from all classes could afford to buy houses in Chennai. The land rates were in the range of 1-15 lakhs. Even the costliest areas: Anna Nagar, Besant Nagar, and Adyar, were only within the range of 20-25 lakhs per ground (2400 sq.ft). Even a person earning a sum of 5000-6000 per month could afford a home.

Thanks to the advent of the IT era, many big BPO and IT companies set their bases in Chennai. Due to the sudden increase in demand, the salaries of young IT professionals soar from an earthly 8000rs per month to astronomical sums of 80,000-1, 00, 000rs per month. Suddenly, youngsters started earning huge salaries that their parents could not even dream of.

Due to their fat pay packages, youngsters started to find new ways to spend their new-found money. Many industries capitalized on this factor. Amongst these industries, the one that benefited the most was the Realty sector (Real Estate).


Barren Lands become Goldmines: The IT companies set their bases in the Old Mahabalipuram Road, now referred as IT HIGHWAY. Taking advantage of the fact that people would prefer to buy land/houses/flats near the highway, the real estate people started to build houses and flats near the barren places such as Duraipakkam, Perungudi, Sholinganallur, Karapakkam, and Medavakkam, which lay nearby.
The land prices in these areas rose from 500 per sq-ft to 4500-5000 per sq.ft. Almost every Tom, Dick, and Harry became land brokers. Their main aim was to sell off flats and houses to IT employees at very high rates. Whenever a person was willing to sell his/her land at a cheap price, a broker would approach the owner promising him/her that they would sell the land at a much higher price. These brokers would then brainwash IT employees into buying land at nearly 10 times the price. As a result, a land worth just 2 lakhs would be sold out for 20 lakhs.

Blessing turns into a Curse:
If anybody thought that the advent of IT could improve the cost of living of the Chennaites, they were woefully wrong. In 2001, even a person with an average salary of 6000 rs could afford a house in Chennai, but now in 2008, even people, who are earning a CTC of 3 lakhs per month, are finding it tough to get a house at a good price.



Why are the rates so high in cities like Chennai and Bangalore?
Can IT Employees really afford to buy a property which is nearly 300-400 times their salary?
Is there really a huge demand for houses?
Why does the price of a property rise by 30% within a week?


A 800 sq.ft flat in Triplicane now costs 40 lakhs. A 600 sq.ft flat in a place like Medavakkam costs 30-35 lakhs. While Triplicane is located in the heart of the city, Medavakkam is a suburb, hardly connected by buses. How come both these places have identical housing rates?

Let’s say an average cost of a home is now 30 lakhs. If a person takes a housing loan from a bank like ICICI, he/she has to pay atleast 30,000 per month as EMI. This is just a considerable estimate. Considering the current economical situation, is it worth it guys?
Is it really worth to pay 40 lakhs for a flat that may not have a resale value? How many of us do earn 30,000 per month. Even if many of us do earn that much, can we afford to spend the entire salary to pay an EMI????

Facts: There are about 14,000 flats in the Old Mahabalipuram road today. There have been no buyers yet? Each of these flats are priced between 30-35 lakhs. Eventhough the prices have come down by 15%, still no buyers? Why? Simple. This whole demand is artificial. At this present situation, only a person who earns 3-5 lakhs per month can afford a house in Chennai.

A home in America is now cheaper than one in Chennai!! Too bad we can’t migrate!


Think people!!! Think! Who is stealing all your hard-earned money? Why should you spend lakhs of rupees to buy a house in a place with improper transport facilities and no resale value?

An article in Economic times states that only 2% of people in the IT industry can REALLY afford to buy houses in Chennai. What about the rest????

My sincere advice to all prospective home buyers is to restrain yourself from buying atleast for the next 6 months. The whole Real Estate Bubble is nothing but a farce, created due to money pumped in by NRIs and Brokers & Builders who wanted to make a fast buck. The whole world is facing a financial crisis, the number of IT jobs has gone down drastically, RBI has reduced the repo rate, home loans have got cheaper, but still the real estate prices remain the same. Why? It’s because these brokers/builders want to cheat us of our hard earned money. Let us not be fooled by their tall claims that the prices would rise sky high again. The prices are already high, let them come down.
Let us wait and ensure that these fraudulent people come down to earth and start selling homes at affordable prices. Consider these before buying a home:
What is the present land value in this region?
How far is the home from the nearby Hospital/Bus Stand/ Railway Station?
Is it affordable? How much money from your salary is required to pay the EMI? Is the EMI less than 60% of your total salary?
Does the property have proper documentation???
What would be the Resale value after 2-3 years?
Is the locality decent?

Please think twice and act wise before buying a house anywhere.
Note: Please exercise caution while buying flats/houses that are still under construction. Approach the nearest registrar office for advice while buying properties at cheap rates.

A Crater?? A Golf hole?? No...its a manhole!!!

Want to play golf? With a much bigger hole? Don’t join any club and waste money - hit the Chennai roads - its free for all here.

This is a picture taken from one of the by lanes of Guindy industrial estate. There is a manhole (rather a crater big enough to topple a motorist) right in the middle of the road. Yeah I know - why cant the motorists find their way around this would be the question - but leaving it like is definitely not an answer. What about cars?? Well, choosing another road is a possibility, but again, leaving it like this is not an answer. Is closing a manhole so costly in Chennai?? Is it so difficult in anyway?? This manhole is open for at least 3 weeks now. And the escapists would say they did not receive any complaints. Do they need a complaint to do every damn job of theirs?? So if this has to be corrected only after a complaint, is leaving the manhole open OK by the rules then??

I generally feel (and everybody contributing to this blog too feel the same way) that change has to come from within before we start pointing out changes to the system. But Honestly, change has to come from "within the people" who run the system before we try to change the system itself.

Shaky start and a Shoddy end...

Wow!!! Chennai is waking up!!! The pits/canals dug up during rains are being closed now. And all roads are being mended. So are we going to see a turn around!!!

Hold on a minute - before we get contended with all that is happening, with all my frustration I have to add that consciousness to "finishing up" still seems to be lacking. The picture below shows how one of the canals dug up during the rains have been filled. This is the same pit from one of my earlier posts ("The rains have stopped but..."), but I guess doing it better (rather doing it the right way) was considered charity. The canal has been filled with mud (and of course whatever was available), but why are these people just not worried about finishing it up properly. When will people understand this is a threat too? When there was a canal, people would have been conscious enough to avoid it. But now, thinking there could be some way, people might end up skidding from their motorcycles. And this is also a source for dust.

Now - Please don’t take me for a guy who is so pessimistic took look at the negatives of everything. But honestly, being contended with such shoddy work is the source of most of our problems in the modern world. When countries are racing towards perfectionism, here we are, not only saying that being shoddy is enough, but also justifying it with our "intellectual" arguments. You can easily translate this deficiency of ours to any bloody sector/industry in this country. Go talk to any individual who has to render a service or product (primarily to the domestic market), and you will find that this tendency is just about omnipresent - next only to god that is. No wonder people working for state departments consider themselves next only to gods.

Hmm… Let me stop here, I'm starting to sound too pessimestic and complaining now.

"Live" action on Chennai Roads...

Wires butting out of nowhere is no uncommon sight in a developing country. But, what hurts is the human apathy towards this. Please see this photo taken on of the bylanes inside the industrial estate in Guindy. I have read many reports of fatal eloctrocutions and it really hurts to see such wires jutting out and nobody really caring about it. These wires have been like this for atleast 3 weeks. Is this a live wire? I dont know... Is this going to be responsible for another fatality? I pray not... When will this be put into shape? I hope before it is too late. With chennai's inherint problem of water logging during rains, this can definitely be a "deadly" combo - literally.

Well - I maybe just dramatizing things- these are in all probability not even electric wires. But anyway, who is going to take responsiblity for having it lying like this for so many days? And in all probability, this could be becuase of some private player who didnt care to follow rules. So all I can hope for is someday, I would live in a city (called "Chennai" or "Madras" or whatever), where every citizen is sensitive to rules - be it a government "servent" or an influential corporate - and the autorities concerned don't turn a blind eye towards deviations.

Plastic Plastic every where but nobody to care...

Indians had never been good at "waste management" - atleast not that I know of. And when it comes to littering, it just does not matter what is littered. Whatever litter I see around, is (coincidentally maybe) mostly non-biodegradable waste. If it should not be in the hand, well what the hell do we have the roads for? Its actually a wonder why people just don’t want to hold it for a few minutes to find a dust bin. Honestly, it is not going to hurt much to hunt for a dustbin. But when it comes to blaming the corporation, we can talk for at least 12 hours with breaks only for leaks. Sometime back, news was making rounds that even human waste (not s$%@t, but human body parts from various government hospitals!!) was actually littered around. Hmm… Interesting hunting ground for scavengers uh??

Anyway, from today (atleast), I will do my best to make sure I don’t contribute to the "waste" generated in Chennai. Well, if atleast 50,000 people in this city "try their best", I guess talks about job cuts would be doing rounds not just in the corporate sector, but in the Chennai corporation too.

To buy what you need...

I came across this post in one of my mail forwards. It really hit me. Don't you think it is time for us to rethink our so called "buying habit"? The reason...
A man with his wife and kid, eats one egg each for breakfast. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen from Rs. 12 a dozen to Rs. 16 and later to Rs. 22 a dozen.
The store owner explained that the price has gone up and he have to raise his price accordingly as this store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. Small egg farms were out of business and
the huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on.

The man thinks about it and arrived at only buying what he needed. His family ate 3 eggs a day. So on the way home from work he would buy only three eggs. He spoke to everyone in
the town and they all started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day. The grocery store owner began complaining that he had *too many eggs* in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't
need any eggs. The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse and informed the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.
To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor refused as there were no rooms for storage.
Slowly the price of eggs started dropping.
Now, transpose this analogy to the *gasoline industry* aor anything you could relate. What if everyone only bought Rs 200.00 worth of Petrol each time they pulled to the pump? The dealer's tanks would stay half full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tanks. Don't fill up the tank of your car. You may have to stop
for gas twice a week, but the price should come down. Think about it. Also, don't buy anything else at the fuel station; don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what
you spend on gas, until the prices come down..." just think of this concept for a while...................please pass this concept around....reaching out to the masses ...the
world..... let us put an end to oil rich countries fleecing the poor and developing countries....

The rains have stopped but...

The rains have stopped. The sky is clear and the day is bright. What cheer it brings waking up every morning to cool breeze and bright sunlight!!! But hey, is it all over? Nope! Are all perils of monsoon to be rested for another few months? Nope again. Chennai chooses to live in the glory of the past - both near and far. When it rains, it pours. And you dont want to forget the monssons before a month right? So, the municipality (or who ever) decided to dig up a cannal for the free flow of water (I would think), but the only technical problem is, it has not been closed for more than a week now. And wow, it can also double up as a garbage dumping yard. And did you know how many entomologists (would have been safer to say scientists - but this sounded better) were dying for mosquitoe samples for their research? This can well be the paradise for mosquitoes. With multiple advantages, why dont you wait for the next monsoons? The roads anyway have to be dug up and what is the point closing them now. And if anyone can defy such a simple logic - I'm open to learning.

A scene near our office in guindy:

A habit called discipline..

We know the Indian political system is corrupt. The government machinery has not been oiled since 1894. And we always complain about all these. And of course, many of us feel strongly that we deserve a better deal. But do we??? Honestly - I feel we don’t. For starters - let me try to think of very simple things we can do - and regularly too - but somehow don’t bother.

1. Don’t jump lanes in traffic - hey the motorist next to you is a human. Why the hell do we want add to the chaos.
2. Don’t criss-cross the road while turning. Hey, we definitely don’t want to scare others do we?
3. Don’t jump signal. Again why the hell do you want to add to chaos?
4. If you are caught breaking any traffic rule - get down and ask for what the fine is and also ask for a recipt. I'm pretty sure a minor traffic violation would not cost us more than 200 bucks. Don’t start the “I’m the son of a gun” thing all over again.

If above all this (and of course assuming you are not part of some bigger violation) – you are still caught by the cops and asked for a bribe, you can at best request (you can obviously demand – but the author is not responsible for consequences) for a damn reason. Any interesting “reason” from a cop is most welcome.

5. Try to be sensitive to littering around us. At least try to be sensitive to non-biodegradable stuff like plastic. Either demand a dustbin or buy one if you find it missing in a place it should be.
6. Try to find out all documents needed to get a “job” done through a government interface. This gives you a great flexibility in bargaining over the bribe amount. Trust me, this in no way nullifies what we need to pay “under the table”. I have had two such experiences – more about it later.
7. Probably the best service you can do to our community – exercise your franchise irrespective of the level of election.

And hey – don’t take me for a saint trying to spread my gyan. Of the list above – I hardly do even one. But come to think of it, if we try to do atleast some of these regularly, we reduce reasons for bribe greatly. And the spiral just goes along.

Of road construction

Chennai is never known for its "infrastructure" if you could call it. This is can applied to all areas. Best example is our road construction. What should have started as a quick fix is now a norm. Roads are built on top of existing battered roads not only making it vulnurable, but in the process submurging buildings on the frindges. I learnt from friends in other countries that when roads need to be rebuilt, they are done by digging up existing ones and relaying the whole structure again. But the best I have seen happen in chennai is just a layer of tar applied on the existing roads. So what starts off as an initiative to aid infrastructure becomes trouble.

I live on the fourth floor of an apartment, and I just hope it does not become a basement someday.