Hacker News Reader

Comment by chdir | Hacker News Reader

For a working class person with no black income (unaccounted/un-taxed), home buying experience has deteriorated in this housing boom. Builders often don't sell you directly. They forward you to a middleman/broker. You are shown the least desirable units as "available" & the rest all sold out (a lie). You are expected to pay a sizable portion of the price as black money (could be as high as 60%). The promised completion date drags on for years. The whole real estate boom is targeted & fueled by black money owners.

Edit: And there are umpteen number of violations of regulations for earthquake, fire safety, building laws. Almost all builders double sell you the common land in the name of "reserved parking", clearly considered illegal by the court.

View on HN

It is completely true. Actually, most of the problems in India can be traced back to previous generation (current old generation). They:

1) Did the most corruption. It wasn't that bad before it.

2) Created all the draconian laws to 'correct' Indian culture.

3) Put pressure on current generation to 'own a house' at the age of 25-30, while they themselves like all the people before them got their house at the ripe age of 50-60.

4) Themselves a product and participant of socialist government with anti-private business attitude, they increased the age of retirement for government jobs. You meet one government employee and tell him/her that you work for some IT company and they will mock you for 'getting undeserved salaries' and 'being ignorant of bureaucracy', whether it is for getting a passport or driving license.

Do you think there are meetings and secret societies where the older generation coordinates to plot the down fall of the newer generation?

Maybe BJP and Congress are the groups you label "secret societies". It is not unheard of for parties to cater to the political views of their most active constituencies.

Thanks. It should be understandable that young people do not have enough patience to get what they want by way of voting or talking to MLA/MPs.

Sounds like every post-war "democracy" the world over...

Cities like Bangalore are worse (relatively speaking) than Silicon valley. Bad infrastructure, horrible traffic, pollution...and yet, home prices are sky high and out of reach for most Indians. A lot of Indians blame software people for this, and they are partly right. With all the multinationals moving in, the salaries went high and with it the real estate prices. Today, it is so bad that even software people can't afford, unless they are ridiculously highly paid.

That said, outside of the big cities there are still lots of places that are cheap to live - if you don't mind cows, electricity problems, internet problems etc.

>> Bad infrastructure, horrible traffic, pollution...and yet, home prices are sky high and out of reach for most Indians. A lot of Indians blame software people for this, and they are partly right.

Not entirely true. I was born and raised in Bangalore. A long before software boom happened here, rents were still considered high for those times, this is because of the economic opportunity this city offers. I'm sure this is true for other cities too. This isn't Bangalore or any other city, as long as there are jobs in a particular city people move in to make a living. This reduces the supply of houses for living, and drives the prices high.

>>That said, outside of the big cities there are still lots of places that are cheap to live - if you don't mind cows, electricity problems, internet problems etc.

Sorry to break out the bad news to you. In most satellite districts to Bangalore like Mysore, Tumkur etc. The prices are almost on par as Bangalore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com