Pakistan’s real estate sector has come a long way in the past few decades. From a largely unorganized and unregulated industry, it has not only increased in magnitude but has become more resilient to changing economic circumstances.
Today, real estate is one of the most significant investment avenues for the nation. It also employs one of the highest numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled laborers. However, the real estate sector in the country has had a fair share of ups and downs.
Delays in project delivery, unaffordable/inflated prices, poor construction quality, changes in project plans without notifications, project cancellations, and profit-hungry mediators became prevalent. This caused a severe trust deficit among the customers towards the sector overall.
To increase foreign exchange reserves for the country, the Government has again entered into another IMF Program to bail itself out. However, this is not a long-term solution but rather a short-term steroid injection. Policymakers should look towards opening the most significant investment avenue to the world and attract investment from all over the globe. That will only be attained if foreign investors have access to data and can monitor their investments.
Speaking to a long-term advocate for transparency in the real estate sector, Jawad Nayyar, Chief Vision Officer at daoproptech.com, said, “A country as rich in resources as Pakistan needs to open its doors to foreign investment. The real estate is prime as per the country’s geolocation, however, transparency in this sector is non-existent. If policy makers can mandate all developers to publish their progress or provide real time access, real estate will become highly lucrative for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). DAO PropTech is an award-winning, digital-ledger based investment platform where users can start their journey to real estate ownership with complete transparency and trust. Not only that, they can also monitor their investments through a personalized digital dashboard.”
Unfortunately, asking foreign investors to rely on the words of the developers, real estate marketing, and sales companies doesn’t make sense. The practices need to change for the economy to evolve and for the diaspora to gain trust and security.
