Land prices in Attariya have jumped following reports that the highway town in western Nepal will be made the capital of Province 7, triggering a real estate boom.

Attariya lies some distance from the main market area, but land prices have been rising fast. Bijaya Raj Bhatt, a local trader in Attariya, sold three dhurs of land for Rs3.5 million recently. It has not been long since he bought two and half katthas of land for Rs40 million.

He has divided the land into housing plots and aims to make Rs70 million by selling them.

Land prices have skyrocketed not only in Attariya but also in the surrounding village development committees (VDCs) and Krishnapur VDC in Kanchanpur.

Local Ram Chandra Awasthi said prices were less than Rs10 million per kattha until recently, but talk about Attariya being made the capital of the new federal province had sent prices soaring.

In Kanchanpur, land prices have reached more than Rs20 million per kattha.

According to real estate broker Dharma Singh Mahara, it is very difficult to find land in the highway area nowadays. Along with the increase in the number of customers, prices have also risen. The real estate business has grown dramatically. If only locals used to buy land in the past, now people from various districts have been coming to buy land here.

The Land Revenue Office, Kailali has confirmed that land revenues have doubled in the last fiscal year due to a jump in the transfer of land titles.

According to Durgadant Panta, an employee of the Land Revenue Office, revenues in the last fiscal year totalled Rs120 million while revenues during the first 10 months of the current fiscal year are expected to reach Rs160 million.

The collection target for the last fiscal was Rs110 million. Pantha said that the collection had exceeded projections.