Buying a house is a dream everyone has and for a lot of people it remains just a dream, especially if you are living in a place like Bombay. The pace of price hike in real estate is even giving the Sensex a complex. When I came to Bombay three years ago, the house I am renting was about 12,00000 rupees but now the price of the same house has gone 20,00000.

One of my friend who used to live in Andheri west told me that the price per square feet in Andheri west was less than 4000 bucks but now the price in Andheri east is more than 6000. I spoke to an estate agent and he told me the per square feet price in Oberoi complex that is being built where Fantasy Land used to be was 6100.

Housing is a basic requirement and one would suppose that the government would take some interest in making sure that this requirement is met but all it is doing is just selling land to developers to make houses. Actually it is not so true, the government is solving the problems of some people-the slum dwellers. The number of rehabilitation projects government undertaken in not funny specially if I am the one paying for it along with every other tax payer.

Not only government completely uninterested in my housing need, it is actually making things more difficult for me by inaction. The Bombay city is bursting at seams and everyone knows there are not enough houses so why is nothing done about it.

The government can enforce some laws that could solve a lot of problems. Even now the buildings that are made not really high rise. The two housing complexes under construction near my home have 16 floors. What is stopping them from taking it to 40 or even 50? If there is a rule that every building has to be at least so many floors high, we will have a lot more houses. This idea makes sense to me, it makes sense to everyone who says that Bombay can now only grow vertically but it doesn't seem to make sense to the government.

This is the still under construction Kalp-taru complex. This has 16 or 17 floors. Why can't it be 40 or 50 floors.

High rise building will not only ensure more houses but more space for wider roads and parks and other things that are so rare in Bombay.

The government is saying that it is making housing more affordable by enforcing a law that the builders can only charge for carpet area (or may be built-up area) as against super built-up area. I am unable to understand how this is going to make housing more affordable. If a builder wants to sell a house for 25lacs, he will sell it for that much only. If he is not allowed to charge for super built up area, he will increase the rate of the carpet area to ensure that the total price stays 25lacs.

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