TN earned 1,187 crore more from real estate registrations in 6 months

“The department earned Rs 1,186.55 crore more in revenue in between April and September this year through registration of property documents this year as compared to last year. This is 28.06 per cent surge in revenue,” an official from the registration department said. 

In terms of the number of documents registered, the department had also fared better than the previous year. “We have registered 12.8 lakh documents in the first half this year while within the same period last year, 10.7 lakh documents were registered. All the documents were related to properties such as sales deed, will, mortgage deed, exchange deed and others,” the official said.  At 2.21 lakh, the highest number of documents registered fell in the Chennai zone, added the official.

Sources in the department attributed the higher income to the new online process implemented last year. “Although guideline values cut by 33 per cent, the government had increased registration fee from 1 per cent to 4 per cent last year which resulted in more revenue. The Online process also enables error-free valuation,” another official said.

The increase in revenue suggests that the real estate has been performing well despite the ongoing regularisation of plots and layouts, and the lack of availability of river sand owing to a court ban. “Importing sand from Malaysia and the government’s decision to opening sand quarries in various rivers helped the industry to recover,” said M Shankar, a builder.