Real estate agents' body calls for city land bank
Real estate agents' body calls for city land bank
JAKARTA (JP): The Association of Indonesian Real Estate Agents
has urged the city administration to set up a land bank to manage
ready-to-build plots of land as well as reclaimed land.
In this way the administration will be able to avoid
monopolies in the handling of land, association chairman
Enggartiasto Lukita said after opening the association's
provincial congress yesterday.
"I'd like to suggest that the bank be managed by the city
administration through its company, PD Sarana Jaya," Enggartiasto
said.
The city-owned firm was formerly called PD Perusahaan Tanah
dan Perumahan, also a land bank. The company changed its name to
PD Sarana Jaya in the 1970s. Since then, it has effectively a
property developer.
A land bank, according to Enggartiasto, is an institution
which has the authority to appropriate a large area and convert
it into ready-to-build plots.
Such a bank then has to formulate a site planning concept for
the ready-to-build area along with standard infrastructure, such
as roads, drainage and sewage systems, he said.
"The plots are then sold along with the detailed planning to
private developers," he said.
He added, however, that the land bank should only plan and
manage the site plan, not develop the land itself.
PD Sarana Jaya could cooperate with private sectors in
handling the ready-to-build land, he said.
"In this way the price of low-cost houses could be well
controlled, as land banking will practically eliminate land
speculators," he said.
Land speculators and brokers have forced developers to spend
more money on purchasing land. The result is that developers
increase the prices of the houses they build, to recoup their
expenditure, Enggartiasto said.
The land banking concept is not new. About seven years ago the
administration planned to make PD Sarana Jaya a land bank.
Yesterday, no one could say with certainty why the land banking
idea has not yet been implemented to date.
Enggartiasto had earlier urged the administration to be
consistent in implementing the zoning and spatial plan.
He said in a seminar on Land in Property Business on Tuesday
that the administration should change the plan arbitrarily.
"The changes in land use, due to the changes in spatial and
zoning plan, could lead to disputes between developers and
consumers," he said.
He said roads and other facilities built by developers for the
housing complexes they develop might be destroyed to make way for
toll roads or other buildings due to the changes in the site
plan. (bsr/32)