Taking stock of realty realities

City techies launch hsg society to fend off greedy builders

To avoid being fleeced by real estate developers, they have formed a housing society which has notched up 1,000 members, most of them software engineers, in just a year. The first project, a 120-acre township in Hoskote, will start in March
S Shyam Prasad shyam.prasad1@timesgroup.com

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In the last one year, these techies have spent all their weekends on the society. Here a few of them are on a site visit and checking the map of the land they are considering for a project

ispelling their partying hard image, a group of city techies have rolled up their sleeves and done the spadework for a housing society that will save their ilk from the rapacious demands of builders and realtors who see techies as rich pickings. The first-of-its-kind IT Housing Co-operative Society is already 1,000 members strong and plans to launch its first housing project in March. It was on a week-end last year one that would have normally seen them let their hair down after a stressful week -- when a few IT professionals and long-time friends floated the idea.

One of them, software engineer Mutturaj Mandya, says, Our original idea was to form a group to fight the real-estate mafia. We wanted to get software workers together. For many years now, software employees have been the biggest buyers of sites, homes and apartments in Bangalore. An apartment that costs Rs 20 lakh is sold to us for Rs 60 lakh. For the next 20 years, we end up repaying the loans. Builders make a 300 per cent profit at our expense. Many people do not realise that our salaries are not enough to maintain our lifestyle. The housing society was thus born and its current president is Mandya. The society's vice-president Sudheendra Chadaga, who works for an

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