This is intended to inform people not yet aware of this forum to visit http://www.indianrealestateforum.com and benefit from its numerous advantages.

India’s economy has gone through a sea change in the last two decades. Once unregulated areas like the stock market are currently well regulated, efficient and have greatly benefited from the internet revolution. It is easy for the common man to invest in stocks and mutual funds today.

On the other hand, the real estate market of India is still poorly regulated, opaque, riddled with dishonesty and political interference. Real estate brokers have created a web of corruption and black money, which the unwary buyer of a home is forced to deal with. In this endeavour, the common man is often at the mercy of local property dealers. And yet, the biggest enemy is not the greed of these dealers but the complete lack of quality information, on which people have to base the biggest purchase of their life.

The Indian Real Estate Forum (IREF) is a beacon of hope for every home buyer in India, because it has pierced this opacity of information.

The uniqueness of this forum comes from its nature - it is a forum of the buyer, by the buyer and for the buyer.

Brokers, agents, builders and other people with vested interest in property dealing are not just unwelcome, they are unceremoniously booted out. The term “broker” is the ultimate insult on IREF – and many vested interests who tried to infiltrate and subvert the good purposes of this forum have suffered from this odious tag. This forum, over a short period of a few years, has become the primary source of quality information on Indian real estate. Every net savvy individual can browse through IREF from the comfort of his home, without being hounded by agents.

http://www.indianrealestateforum.com is designed as a threaded discussion forum, which has been systematically arranged area wise and topic wise, so that one can immediately focus on the area of interest. If you are from the national capital region, there are separate areas for Delhi, NOIDA, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Greater NOIDA and other nearby small cities. Other cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata etc are also hotspots of discussions, as are smaller tier 2 cities.

For a first time entrant to this forum, the sheer quantity of information and the speed of postings on hot topics of the day can be overwhelming. Knowing a little bit about the forum can help in navigating this sea of information. Most discussions are threaded which means that a person posts a topic, known as a thread. Once posted, others on the forum write their comments as replies to the original thread. On hot topics of the day, there may be as many as 50 posts in a single day. The forum is most active in cities with a lot of computer professionals, like Gurgaon, NOIDA, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai etc. In each of these, there may be 50 to a 100 threads under active discussion every day.

The forum is populated by many people who are fairly expert in their understanding of real estate deals. Many are active investors who have made numerous real estate deals in their lives and have a lot of experience. Their guidance and comments are most useful for people making an initial foray into a home purchase. While these veterans are quite happy to help people with queries, it is best to not immediately start a thread with your query. Instead, spend a few days reading through the various threads under discussion. Start with general discussions and then read through some of the active threads in your location of interest. Then find discussions relevant to the project which interests you. Since most real estate projects would have been discussed as soon as they are launched, it is useful to go back to the earlier dated threads which are no longer active. These old threads are likely to contain much more useful information than what response you might receive by posting a fresh query.

Most of the investors after discussing pros and cons of old projects are unlikely to again discuss the same thing. These old threads should be mined for a wealth of information. The threads are organized date wise based on the latest reply – so if there have been no replies to a thread on your topic of interest, that thread may be 10 or even 20 pages deep. An easy way to find threads of your interest is to do a search – threads are searchable by topic. So if you are interested in a Unitech project in NOIDA, searching that forum for Unitech will pull out all the threads related to your project.

On IREF you will find all the information you need to take an informed decision. Advantages and disadvantages of a location will be discussed in detail. Every project in a location will be evaluated against each other and the benefits and price comparison will be evaluated at depth. Even the discount on the amount of brokerage commission you will get back from your dealer will be discussed. Usually, this is enough to take an informed decision on which project to buy and at what price. Armed with this information, a person is no longer at the mercy of the broker and can negotiate the best deal. Sometimes people buying from a common builder find each other on IREF, band together and negotiate a better deal.

You will also find here, many general discussion threads where everything from world economy, factors affecting real estate pricing and even information on real estate stocks will be available. Most of these macroeconomic trends are discussed in the Pune forum – so in addition to visiting your own city’s forum, glance through some of the threads in the Pune forum as well. The issue of timing one’s entry and exit in a real estate investment can be crucial. These discussions will guide you in this regard.

The forum is policed by a group of moderators and an efficient administrator. Irrelevant threads, offensive posts, agent’s advertisements and other irrelevant posts are immediately deleted. If you come across anything objectionable, there is a button to report it to the administrators as offensive and action is taken immediately.

IREF has emerged as a potent internet resource to untangle the knotty problem of real estate dealings. Buyers well armed with their rights and good information from such sites should pressurize legislators to undertake suitable reforms. It is hoped that in future, our government will take suitable reformatory action and regulate this chaotic and unregulated market. While we wait for that, we have to rely on sites like IREF.