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)