Hunting a house in Shimla

What happens when at 27 your yet to be father in law expects you to own a house? Quite obvious in love you get into searching mode to find home which not only suits your needs but also matches expectations of your would be and her extended family. A similar scenario recently happened with a friend in Shimla who for past six months has been trying to locate a heavenly abode.

As usual his search began with newspaper advertisements which are rare, few and far in between. Thanks to extremely localised newspapers such as Divya Himachal or Amar Ujala, one does lay hands on few advertisements and with bated breath call up the mobile number to find out the prices. The polite but uncomforting voices from the other side give answers like these. 3 bed room flat in New Shimla is for Rs 26 Lakh. A flat scheme claiming to be 10 min drive from Mall road starts at Rs 30 lakh although I must tell that vehicles cannot be taken to the mall by one and all. A godforsaken one room flat at the far end of housing board colony in Kelston starts at Rs 7 lakh. This is the same price at which the owner bought the flat few years back. A quick check with HIMUDA, the government agency surprises you even more. Their flats in Kasumpti region start at Rs 35 lakh. The real charm of living in Shimla is of living right on the Mall road. However the last advertisement which I happened to see on an online property website quoted a price of more than a crore of rupees for a property near the mall.

If finding a land or a flat with few hours of sunshine was not enough a challenge then dealing with property dealers certainly is. The major issue in finding the right property in Shimla is that there is no proper mechanism of price discovery. A property dealer remarked that one will get the best deal if property dealers are not involved. If a property dealer gets to hear of a deal which does not involve them they will ensure that seller will jack up the prices beyond the buyers capacity and the deals would never materialise. There are properties around the town which are waiting to be sold but the prices are too inflated.

By the end of all this, one starts wondering is it worth a place to shell out prices equivalent to housing schemes in Faridabad and Ghaziabad. After all Shimla beyond mall road is just a heap of garbage, most of it is sinking under its own weight and the dust looms large belittling the town which claims to be capital of one of greenest states in the country. Moreover the price escalation will not be as quick as one sees in the NCR region. So one wonders is it the right time to invest in a property in Shimla. Well the answer lies in long queues of people lining up at SBI Shimla to file applications for DDA scheme in Delhi.