Pros and Cons Of Buying Home in Gated Communities

Pros and Cons of Gated Community

What is Gated Community:

Gated community is a word coined by real estate developers to sell their projects. However Gated Community is not recognized by any statue in India.

On practical terms, Gated Community (GC) means an exclusive area of residence where pedestrians, public vehicles are strictly controlled. It provides access to all livelihood necessities like shopping, hospital, schools, creches, entertainment, ATM, and parks. Also it provides civic provisions like water treatment plant, solar electricity, well laid roads so that the life will be better inside the compound walls.

For any residential project less than 4.95 acres need not get development plan, only building plan is sufficient to start construction. Builder can construct compound wall and call it as gated community. However if there is any residential layout inside then rights to common amenities like road and park will be relinquished and accessible to public.

Benefits of Gated Community:

Safety:

GC provides highly secured environment because of restricted access to enter in to the premises for public. Security guards ensure only authorized people enter in to the premises from multiple entry points. Moreover security cameras, CCTV, interconnected phones monitor all movements of people inside the premises. Since household needs are available inside there is no risk of going out for urgent needs at nights.

Children Play Area, Community Development:

With nuclear families are mushrooming everywhere and cities are filled with migrants, children have little hope to interact with play and socialize with others. However in GCs there is children play area where they can play and socialize with their age group people. Also children need not travel to a long distance for schools.

Office Space:

Now there are lot of GCs are built with theme that ground floor office space and first floor residence or walk able distance to offices. This reduces lot of mundane travel every day, fuel consumption.

Issues with Gated Community:

GC is marred with controversies about sharing of space with government agencies:

"There is no concept of gated communities, as per our by-laws. There is permission for the formation of layouts and construction of residential blocks. But they cannot block part of the layout from public access. That is not allowed in the laws and amounts to gross violation," says the then BDA commissioner Bharatalal Meena on the legal validity of Gated Community.

L&T’s south city project got in to controversy as the company relinquished rights over 5.5 acre park and 60 feet road, constructed inside the gated community to BDA for public access. Buyers were crying foul that they were not aware of these clauses and developer misled them while selling.

In other instance Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) demolished a compound wall of a gated community in Bannerghatta road in Bangalore. This is done to restore public access to running within to connect Arakere and puttanhalli main road.

There is no clear answer to whether private roads, and parks need to be shared with government agencies.

Longer Duration To Complete Ecosystem:

GC is not only consists homes but also consist of civic amenities like schools, water treatment plant etc. It takes longer duration to construct this amenities and builder should be motivated enough to construct and maintain for a considerable period of time. Otherwise buyers will land in trouble.

Working with Civic agencies for Electricity, garbage cleaning:

There are plenty of issues with GC and civic agencies in sharing responsibility of sewage, garbage cleaning, and potable water facilities. In large communities they create self supplying facilities and others buy or get service from outside. But this increases cost for the home buyer.

However considering both pros and cons, if a home buyer can choose a right builder and go through the development plan to understand access to common facilities, it is worth buying in Gated community. It will give peace of mind, price appreciation and togetherness which is lacking otherwise. Lot of Residential Apartments in Bangalore and Residential Apartments in Chennai are considered as gated communities.

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