What should you do with your DHA Bahawalpur files?

Launched in July 2015, DHA Bahawalpur is steadily progressing. Unlike DHA Multan and DHA Gujranwala, the Bahawalpur project is seeing important developments that have intrigued investors. It is the first project of this scale in Bahawalpur, a city where the residents are not familiar with the magnitude of the real estate trade in the larger cities of Pakistan. It is, therefore, not surprising that a large chunk of investors who have invested in DHA Bahawalpur are from other cities or overseas.

For the small percentage of local investors with limited holding power, the approaching date to pay the first instalment has created panic.

Current project status

Registered investors of DHA Bahawalpur are currently busy acquiring the additional land required for the access road to the project. According to Lt Col (retd) Khalil Ahmed, land for the 6,000 general category files and the 2,000 Pakistan Army quota files issued by DHA has already been acquired. According to him, although the last date pay the down payment for plot files has passed, an extension has been granted. However, please note that there has been no official notification in this regard.

Per Col Khalid, for a 10-marla property file, the owner is required to pay a sum of PKR 220,000 plus a membership fee of PKR 37,000. This brings the total amount up to PKR 257,000. The down payment for a 1-kanal plot file is PKR 380,000 plus a membership fee, which brings the total up to PKR 417,000.

A few days after the file balloting was held in DHA Bahawalpur, the successful owners started to demand a profit of PKR 200,000 for both 10-marla and 1-kanal files. Unfortunately, this trend couldn’t last for long as DHA announced the payment schedule soon thereafter.

According to the latest details, investors with less holding power are looking to bail out since they cannot afford to pay the down payment coupled with the quarterly instalments of these files. Consequently, a lot of files are offered for sale, which has brought the asking profit down to PKR 25,000.

Future prospects

In the case of DHA Bahawalpur, everything seem to be done in haste. The project was launched in July last year, file balloting took place in November 2015, and DHA announced the payment schedule right away. For a city such as Bahawalpur, where the real estate market still has a long way to go before it matures, this is all a little too quick. It’s only natural for first-time investors to be conscious and to make small, calculative moves. They need time to make big decisions, such as whether they should hold on to these files, whether they should pay the dues, how much profit should they ask for, and how much money they should settle on.

Nonetheless, with this pace of activity, DHA Bahawalpur can certainly serve as an example for DHA Multan and Gujranwala, which are comparatively lazy developments where agents and investors seemingly create fake hype to increase or decrease file rates.

Col Khalil, whose firm serves as a registered DHA Bahawalpur investor for acquiring the required land, has told me that the project has superseded investor expectations and is moving ahead very quickly with important developments such as groundbreaking and plot balloting planned in near future.

According to him, groundbreaking in DHA Bahawalpur is likely to take place by the end of the first quarter of 2016. By mid-2016, plot balloting will be held and file owners will be allotted their respective plot numbers in Phase I.

With such concrete developments in the pipeline, it appears that holding on to these files is the way to go forward. Groundbreaking of any project brings along a decent jump in rates. Furthermore, massive gains are registered when the date of balloting approaches. You can also learn more about the DHA Bahawalpur master plan here.

In the case of this project, where lack of real estate understanding has propelled people to ask for the same profit on both 10-marla and 1-kanal plot files, things will get clearer and smoother in the upcoming months. The project offers great prospects for impressive short-term gains.

Therefore, investors are advised to not sell their DHA Bahawalpur files just now. Waiting for groundbreaking and plot balloting will definitely help them secure better profits.

Note: Information quoted in this article has been provided by Lt Col (retd) Khalil Ahmad. For direct communication, he can be reached at +92-333-582-2340.