When you think of the real estate industry in Pakistan, you think mostly about cities like Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Multan, and Faisalabad. Or maybe even developing cities like Gujranwala or Gawadar. There are large projects being undertaken in these cities – all massive, all gaudy, all ridiculously priced, and almost all full of fraud, scheming, and corruption. But as much as Pakistan seems to love grossly made housing societies with little planning and a lot of nauseating design choices, there is perhaps one place where housing societies could be done right – up north.
Pakistan has a breathtaking northern province, a lot of which is accessible and a lot more of which is very quickly becoming so. Perhaps the most famous of these locations is Murree, once in contention with Simla to be the summer capital of the British empire in India. Serene, beautiful, and a bit of a tourist city that has slowly been poisoned by high visitation, Murree still has vast tracts of land that…