Pakistan's real estate is a lottery, not an investment

Why a Pepsi sales manager walked into a crashing market

The episode opens with Muzamil explaining why he wanted to speak to a builder specifically — not a broker or a file trader, but someone directly connected to construction and job creation. His guest, Zeeshan Akram Qureshi, CEO of ZEM Builders, turned out to be exactly that kind of contrarian.

Zeeshan’s background is not what you might expect from a real estate developer. He comes from a middle-class family of government servants — his father was a civil engineer, his grandfather a civil servant — and he spent four and a half years in corporate sales at Pepsi before making his move. The year he chose to enter real estate was 2006, which he describes as “the worst year of real estate,” a period when the market was crashing one to ten percent daily and colleagues told him he was out of his mind.

His reasoning for entering at precisely that moment is one of the more interesting ideas in the conversation. When a market is down, he explains, the experienced people in that industry finally have time for you. “Kiसी भी चीज़ को learn करने के लिए आपको जो knowledge source of knowledge है, अगर वह human है तो आपके पास आपको उसके पास जाना है और उसके best time पर जाना है — अपने best time पर नहीं जाना” (To learn anything, if the source of knowledge is a person, you have to go to them at their best time, not your own). His best time was everyone else’s worst time.

He started not as a builder but as a financial consultant, helping clients invest their savings in actual physical plots — not files, not paper — and taking a percentage of the returns he generated. From the beginning, he says, he refused to deal in anything that did not physically exist.

The plot lottery and what it is actually doing to the economy

Muzamil presses Zeeshan on the question that prompted the episode in the first place: what is actually going on with Pakistan’s plot-file culture, and does it have any economic justification?

Zeeshan’s answer is blunt. He estimates that approximately one million new plots have been sold in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi region alone over the past five to seven years. The total population of the combined capital territory is not more than 4.67 million. That means, he says, enough plots have been sold to relocate the entire existing population of Islamabad — and the city still needs to double in size over the next ten to fifteen years just to sustain its growth.

The problem is that almost none of this land is being used. People are buying plots on the city outskirts because they are cheap today, with the vague hope that prices will double or triple. “Plot is a lottery,” Zeeshan says flatly. “Basically ہم لوگ یہ چاہتے ہیں پیسہ کمانا — یہ نہیں جانتے کہ پیسہ کمانا کیسے ہے” (We want to make money but we don’t know how money is actually made).

He makes a point that Muzamil finds particularly sharp: when you evaluate a plot’s return against commodity exchange rates rather than in rupee terms, the gain often disappears entirely. A plot that doubled in rupee value over a year may have delivered no real purchasing-power gain at all. A shop, apartment, or office that generates five to six percent annual rental income at least produces something while you wait.

Why vertical growth is not a preference but a necessity

Later in the discussion, Zeeshan lays out the structural argument for why Pakistan’s cities must grow upward rather than outward, and why this is not primarily an aesthetic or planning preference but an economic one.

As fuel prices move toward international levels — he estimates petrol will eventually cost around 300 rupees per litre — people who have bought cheap plots on city outskirts will find that their transportation costs exceed their housing costs. The people most likely to be living on outskirts are precisely those with the fewest resources. Their financial situation will deteriorate further, not improve.

“Ultimately Pakistan ko apne metro city mein vertical growth par jaana hi jaana hai — apni fuel consumption cost ko bachaane ke liye, apni security ko align karne ke liye, apni living community ko bachaane ke liye” (Pakistan will inevitably have to move toward vertical growth in its metro cities — to save on fuel costs, to align security, and to preserve living communities).

He also raises the agricultural cost of horizontal sprawl. Lahore’s fertile lands are being converted into housing schemes, which is one reason Pakistan now imports wheat. Land, he argues, is this country’s core asset and must be used with far more discipline.

Vertical construction also solves a security problem that horizontal sprawl cannot. In a high-rise building, security management is concentrated and manageable. In sprawling low-density development, it becomes impossible. And when a person’s basic sense of security is compromised, their working efficiency falls with it.

The three segments of real estate — and why builders are the missing one

Muzamil asks Zeeshan to explain how the industry actually works. Zeeshan breaks it into three segments: the developer (dwellper), who creates plots; the builder, who constructs on those plots; and the trader, who buys and sells.

The problem in Pakistan, he says, is that the government has never created the conditions for builders to operate at scale. Internationally, governments develop planned zones, invite builders in, and create new communities. In Pakistan, private housing societies have expanded in an unplanned and excessive way, locking up capital in idle land rather than circulating it through construction.

“Real estate ke peeche 45 industries to 60 industries chal rahi hain” (Behind real estate, 45 to 60 industries are running). When construction happens, money moves through dozens of supply chains and employs thousands of people. When a plot sits empty, none of that happens. The builder sector, he argues, is what Pakistan needs to promote — not the trader or the speculator.

The amnesty scheme question and what regulation actually requires

Muzamil raises the amnesty scheme that the previous government gave to real estate, which many economists have criticised for pumping up property prices artificially. He also references comments by former finance ministers who argued that real estate, agriculture, and retail are not being taxed properly.

Zeeshan’s response is pointed. You cannot tax an industry that has no regulatory foundation. “Pehle real estate ki koi regulatory authority to bana len. Phir real estate office licensing to bana len. Phir real estate agent ka criteria to bana len, uski certification to bana len” (First, build a regulatory authority for real estate. Then create office licensing. Then set criteria and certification for agents). Without those foundations, talking about taxation is like trying to put a roof on a building that has no walls.

He describes amnesty schemes as revenue-collection patches — a way to recover shortfalls in a cycle — rather than structural solutions. And he makes a broader point about business policy: until a businessman is given a fixed tax slab and a forecasted inflation rate for at least five years, no business can be properly designed. Without that certainty, businessmen will keep leaving, and Pakistan will become a country of traders only. When that happens, money concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, the economic circle stops turning, and the poor get poorer.

Affordable housing, bank leasing, and the middle-class trap

Muzamil asks whether affordable middle-class housing actually exists in Pakistan today. Zeeshan says it does, but that the financing model is broken.

He draws a direct parallel to what Musharraf did with car leasing in 2002. Before bank leasing was introduced, cars were rare. After it was introduced, automobile ownership became common and the sector contributed meaningfully to the economy. The same logic applies to housing. When bank leasing enters real estate at scale, people who are currently paying rent will shift to leasing — and with it will come a sense of ownership that changes how they think about their lives and their country.

He is careful to separate two problems that often get conflated. Low-cost housing and vertical growth are not the same thing. Vertical construction uses the same steel and the same structural standards regardless of the unit size — the cost per square foot does not fall just because the building is tall. What vertical growth can do is reduce the size of units while maintaining quality, bringing the total price down. True low-cost horizontal housing requires government to provide land at subsidised rates and keep construction costs minimal — a different policy lever entirely.

The deeper point, he says, is that the goal should not be to push housing prices down but to push incomes up. When businesses are motivated and growing, employment and earnings rise, and housing becomes affordable through purchasing power rather than through artificially suppressed prices.

Overseas Pakistanis, fraud, and why right now is the time to buy

By the end of the conversation, Zeeshan makes his most direct investment argument. He says the current market downturn — where builders are still pricing projects at exchange rates from six months ago — represents a genuine window for overseas Pakistanis. “Warren Buffett kehta hai ke jab market se sab log buyer hon, then you have to be seller — aur jab sab log seller hon, then you have to be a buyer” (Warren Buffett says when everyone in the market is buying, you should be selling — and when everyone is selling, you should be buying). Right now, he says, everyone is selling.

He is equally direct about how to avoid fraud. Check that the plot is registered in the builder’s name. Examine the company’s track record of delivered projects. Assess the company’s worth and capacity. And walk away from any pitch that promises unexpectedly large returns. “The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward — aur bigger the lose.” The tools to do this research exist: Google Earth can show you whether a development is built or empty, and DHA statements can be checked from anywhere in the world.

His closing thought is not optimistic in the short term. Pakistan, he says, does not yet have the attitude for progress — the habit of looking at the positive angle of things rather than the negative. “Jab tak hum apna canvas nahi change karenge, tab tak hum taraqqui nahi karenge” (Until we change our canvas, we will not progress). What the country needs, above all, is leadership — and until that arrives, the system will keep producing the same results.