Home truths from Murree

Scratch a Murree local and find a property dealer offering you a potential ‘luxury property’.

For a country on an economic downslide it is amazing just how many people are snapping up property in the Murree area, and right now! Ever since the Punjab government actually did something sensible and declared the area ‘environmentally sensitive’, an untold number of angry speculators — some of them having invested huge amounts in land on which to build apartment complexes — have been frothing at the mouth as they vainly struggle to obtain the requisite NOC from the Environment Protection Agency in Lahore.

Permissions also have to be obtained from the Murree Improvement Trust and a number of other government departments before work can get under way. Some developers, however, go ahead anyway, working on the premise that if they fork out enough in bribes their completed monstrosities will be approved.

It isn’t just developers who have been hit by this belated environmental sensibility. Those wanting to construct just one house, be it a permanent or part time residence, are, quite rightly, subject to the same law. I am delighted to report that the paindus who purchased a plot from Forrest Gump last year are amongst those caught up in the morass. I know this is nasty and petty of me, but I really did not relish the thought of neighbours like that. I should sympathise with the fact that they spent, on top of the purchase money, more cash on erecting boundary walls and clearing the site of undergrowth and mature trees which locals promptly grabbed for firewood, but I have a malicious grin plastered across my face as I write this!

This is, as everyone knows, a tourist area: Goodness knows how many people, locals and outsiders, depend one way or another on tourism for a living; yet greed is killing the proverbial goose. Local people have been selling off prime chunks of land to developers for years and still are, with far less success since the new law was announced. This means that their children will inherit little, if any, land at all and thus be forced to move elsewhere. In the future, these same people are unlikely to be in any position to purchase land of their own up here, unless they undertake a good many highway or bank robberies.

The frenzied, myopic sale of land over the last two or three decades has resulted in ugly over-development of a once beautiful region: Trees have been cleared, access roads and tracks bulldozed up steep slopes making them prone to landslides, natural water sources no longer satisfy the huge summer population so uncontrolled tube-wells have moved in to drain precious aquifers. All this, in turn, leads to further destruction of remaining greenery with a knock on effect on wildlife and indigenous flora. The scale of desecration is shocking and yet, with tourists still pouring in to be taken advantage of, property prices have soared.

Land prices have gone up from Rs100,000 per kanal as recently as three years ago, to over Rs200,000 per marla in scenic locations away from the main road. Existing property, no matter how dilapidated it happens to be, is suddenly a gold mine although, I hasten to add, extensive renovations which alter the size of a house legally need planning permission too. Idealistically speaking, controls should have been imposed many moons ago but everyone, including local politicians, authorities and lawyers, are naturally against anything that might bring their incomes down to an ‘honest’ level, as attempts by the Murree Improvement Trust to convince the provincial government to relax planning rules amply illustrate.

Being one of those rare breed of people who happen to be against anyone owning a second home, for pleasure or as an investment, I recently found myself in a tight corner when asked to help friends find just such a thing so that they could spend a little time out in the hills every now and then. Having explained that holiday homes wreck local economies, remove potential homes from indigenous youngsters and are morally wrong when so many people don’t even have roofs over their heads, I ultimately surrendered when my friends pointed out that if I did not help them they would be left to the mercy of a property dealer. Idealist I am, but realist I am too.

What followed was an eye opener: How about paying Rs8 million for a six-bedroom prison? The brand new house boasts tasteless columns on either side of the front door and painfully narrow marble steps which lead into the ‘drawing room’ which has a weird ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ device implanted in the ceiling! The drawing room is a dark and dreary place with one small window, two of the upstairs bedrooms have one small window each. The other four bedrooms — two upstairs and two downstairs, have no windows at all, but one windowless bedroom downstairs is livened up by the presence of a tube-well and donkey pump!

Rs5 million would buy a three-bedroom concrete bunker build into a hillside and in the final stages of self-destruction thanks to lack of drainage, and at Rs4.5 million there is a mud house right on top of a steep hill. It claimed to have four bedrooms but had two, plus one buffalo residence and an attached chicken shed, and overlooked something I hadn’t known existed: a secure compound of perhaps a dozen or so houses and apartments owned by a general, a judge and others deeming it necessary to be kept under lock and key. At Rs3 million was another mud house in need of major repair work and minus an access road. The list goes on. We must have walked at least 50 miles up, down, across and around the mountain and by the time I surrendered, having wisely decided to opt out of the game, my legs must have been all of two inches shorter.

Throughout the painful process we were accompanied by an expanding retinue of would-be property dealers who always had the ‘perfect place’ ... just around the next corner, the next hill or in the next village and all, without exception, offered to build a dream house to match my friend’s imagination if they would just buy this plot or that field. Suddenly they were building contractors as well! What none of them seem to realise is that the area had reached saturation point long ago as far as construction is concerned and that continuing to build unsuitable houses and high-rise buildings is both ludicrous and dangerous — let’s not forget that the area is earthquake prone, and just because it escaped narrowly in the big one of 2005, doesn’t automatically mean it will be lucky next time around.

This worrying situation aside, one cannot blame local people for making hay while the sun still shines, although the classification of the area as ‘Environmentally sensitive’ has now put a spoke in their wheels. Actual employment opportunities are few and young men have no real option but to move away in search of whatever menial work they can find as their elders go about the business of selling off their birthrights. If — and this is where the idealist comes back into play — there weren’t any holiday homes and tourists had to stay in rented accommodation, there would be no need for the younger generation to migrate as they could all find work so much closer to what is left of home.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, July 3^rd, 2011.