‘Reliance on academic research key to sustainable housing, real estate policies’

Islamabad : Federal Minister for Housing and Works Mian Riaz Hussain Pirzada on Wednesday said that reliance on academic research for producing sustainable policies in the housing and real estate sectors was inevitable.

While addressing the international conference on Re-Imagining the Real Estate: Sustainable Market Growth and Urban Planning, he lauded the team at NUML that worked tirelessly to take the lead and to introduce real estate as a sector that has a huge potential for workable research and planning. This conference was arranged by the faculty of Management Sciences at National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad.

The conference was aimed to underscore the persistent challenges and inefficiencies within Pakistan’s real estate sector. As one of Asia’s largest real estate markets, the sector significantly influences the national GDP but suffers due to the lack of transparency, standardized valuation methods, and regulatory oversight that results in mispricing, under-invoicing, and unauthorized housing developments, particularly in urban areas like Islamabad.

Through the conference experts in real estate industry were brought together to forge solutions that would enhance market efficiency and integrity, which are vital for fostering sustainable economic growth and urban development in Pakistan. The Minster said that in many counties like Japan, Türkiye and Iran urban expansion has been managed efficiently through proper planning and management. He deplored that Pakistan has vast resources particularly in the form of rich lands that can be utilised for economic development through strategic foresight.

At this occasion, he announced that housing ministry is ready to collaborate with a group of experts and students nominated by NUML. This group will study the current challenges and opportunities in housing sector and their recommendations will be incorporated in the upcoming Housing Policy that ministry is going to launch in early 2025.