Human Resource Crisis and Real Education in India

Real estate as a business sector in India was highly localized till late 1990s. It involved funds mainly of the promoters or borrowed from local sources and properties used to be sold mostly to local buyers. Moreover, these properties used to be sold mostly through direct marketing and partly thorough advertisement in local newspapers. Naturally, manpower requirement as well as skill level of the human resource involved was very low.

However, since the beginning of the millennium, the scenario changed dramatically owing to dynamic economic growth. Developers started launching projects after projects, which used to be supported by innovative financial tools offered by private equity & venture capital funds in addition to traditional financial institutions. Governments equally supported the growth with their growth oriented policies. Housing Finance Institutions started offering loans to prospective home buyers liberally. On the other hand, developers and property agents and advisors started formulating innovative marketing, sales and customer service strategies. They suddenly moved from direct and local level marketing to national and international level marketing. World Wide Web became one of the most common medium of promotion.

The above developments resulted in massive requirements of trained, competent and specialist human resources for the real estate sector. Unfortunately, since the time real estate business started growing, neither the real estate sector nor the Government ever thought of any long term strategy to develop manpower for the real estate sector, except occasional airing of concern. The result is the acute manpower crisis in the Indian real estate sector.

It is worth to mention here that real estate is a little different from all the other economic sectors. Because, in order to run real estate business smoothly one needs to have good understating of different aspects of real estate including planning, development, construction, finance, marketing etc., which is not the case with any other sector. This is the reason why professionals from other sectors take time to become productive in real estate sector. Therefore, a proper system of real estate education is almost mandatory for a growth oriented real estate sector.
It is, though, important to note here that there have been few initiatives to offer real estate education in India, most noticeable NICMAR and NIREM. NICMAR, through its centres at New Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad etc., offers a one and a half year program in real estate. NIREM, on the other hand, offers one year PG Diploma and six months Diploma in various specializations of real estate such as real estate management, marketing, sales & brokerage, finance, investment, appraisal etc. NIREM offers these courses as correspondence course.

To conclude, I must say that the above initiatives towards real estate education are insufficient compared to the human resource needs of the Indian real estate sector. Unless there is an integrated planning towards introduction of the system of real estate education in India, this sector will continue to face manpower crisis.