Daily Times

If you have ever bought a property in Pakistan, you must be familiar with the cumbersome process of real estate transactions. From signing the sale agreement to the transfer of property, imagine going through the entire document collection process and ending up buying a disputed piece of land? What follows is the long series of legal battles and property disputes. It is not surprising that 50-75% of the pending cases in Pakistani courts are related to real estate, and more than 70% of complaints on Call Sarzameen are also connected with real estate. However, recent developments by Pakistan’s leading real estate group have introduced quick solutions to all your real estate problems. Realising the potential of the real estate sector, the IMARAT Group has set out to transform the real estate sector through technological innovation, teaching International best practices, improving developmental opportunities and implementing sustainable solutions.

Relying solely on your ‘property dealer’ can be a risky process, especially for inexperienced investors unaware of market practices. With our busy schedules and daily commitments, it becomes highly impractical to personally visit and verify details of every property, making people susceptible to fraud. To resolve this issue, IMARAT Group launched Graana.com, Pakistan’s 1st Online Real Estate Marketplace, to make buying, selling, and investing in real estate seamless and reliable; to counter malpractices in the real estate sector and to provide transparent and reliable transactions to consumers and investors in real estate. Graana.com is leading the industry with its innovative and out of the box solutions to transform the real estate sector in Pakistan. The company has integrated the highest standards of ethics with an extremely transparent property portal, where consumers can sit back, relax and let Graana.com handle their transactions and investments with transparent processes and personalised contracts.

As an investor, the first step to ensure a safe and secure transaction is the inspection and verification of a property. Many real estate transactions end up in a ‘capital trap’ due to investing in disputed and illegal parcels of land or [Housing Societies]. Real estate assets amass 60 to 70% of the country’s total wealth. However, the absence of a consolidated database for property verification has resulted in multiple malpractices. A Digital Property Verification System is of paramount importance to ensure safe and secure transactions. Digitisation trends have revolutionised the core values of the real estate industry through fast-paced technologies like proptech, contech and fintech. To eradicate the problem of property verification, the IMARAT Group has recently launched Propsure Digital Solutions, offering Pakistan’s first-ever online property verification and inspection services.

Propsure is a one-of-a-kind proptech company and is the pioneer of the digital transformation of the real estate sector of Pakistan. Propsure uses disruptive technologies to conduct spatial analysis to create visualisations of a particular property in the form of a map. They also provide an in-depth real estate market analysis that allows investors to make informed decisions. Their market analysis includes information about the property’s price, dimensions, permitted land usage, by-laws, plot status, building height, adjoining road, and multiple other metrics. In essence, digitising land records amplifies market knowledge with the true impact of location-based data to better understand the real estate market and the factors that drive growth. As a plus point, the listings on Graana.com are verified through Propsure, which affirms the credibility and legality of the online marketplace.

Propsure has accomplished geo-tagging and digital mapping of over 3 Million Plots, 0.5 Million Points of Interest and 0.2 Million Roads in planned areas of 7 major cities of Pakistan. Each of these plots has exclusive data with 47 different indicators to aid investors in making informed real estate investmentdecisions. They have also launched the Property Inspection Services (“PINS”) to provide ‘approval’ and ‘land-usage-status’ of a given property to investors with an insight into applicable bylaws and regulations. Each property in Propsure’s inventory contains a Title Plan and a Title Register by the legal and regulatory status of the relevant plot.

The lack of a proper regulatory framework is the plight of the real estate sector of Pakistan. Most of the horizontal and vertical real estate projects launched in Pakistan are unapproved by the regulatory authorities. According to the figures projected by CDA, Islamabad has approximately 64 authorised housing societies and around 140 illegal housing societies. Even though Pakistan received 30 Billion USD instead of Foreign Remittances in 2021, out of which 40% went into the real estate economy; however, a lack of a Digital Property Verification System has made the investors vulnerable to the pervasive malpractices in the real estate sector. In such circumstances, companies like Graana.com and Propsure are a breath of fresh air. They are the flagbearers of digital transformation in the real estate sector, a sure shot way to guarantee transparent real estate transactions and avoid the infamous ‘capital trap’ for investors. The concept of an online marketplace with a digital database is of paramount importance to build investors’ confidence in the real estate economy. The future of the real estate sector of Pakistan is bright with the involvement of Graana.com and Propsure. They will work together to ensure transparency in real estate transactions through innovative technologies and digital frameworks.

The writer can be reached at zeenia.waheed@graana.com.