Affordable housing in India opportunities and challenges for developers

Abstract or Introduction

This paper focuses mostly on the developer’s side because affordable housing is not possible by the government alone and government is not giving any special type of benefits towards the developer which is making them to loss interest in this segment. The Millions of Indians want to have roof over their heads, yet at the same time hundredth and thousands of housing units remain unutilized throughout the country, the reason is simple, the developers are investing in mid and premium segments but are increasing the material and labor costs while financing the segments, making affordable housing segments unaffordable. The Perceptional risk at keeping buyers away are approached from two angles, the First one, looks at the need of organized players such as Tata housing and Mahindra life who brought innovation and assembly line approach to this sector. Demands are simple and have a single-window of simplified approval process that includes Digitalized land record to make developing land easier. Also to enable mass housing within the city along with simplified taxation on affordable homes schemes and taxation like- Vat, the service tax, stamp duty, registration, if handled by the government then the mass affordable housing has the potential of reducing the cost of ownership by 15 – 20%.
The Other method to simplify Mass Affordable housing is to make the smaller developer understand the value of the land that is critical to crack the market. Organizations like “Brickeagle” are helping developers to achieve that. It is important because bank did not want to educate the developer to buy the land parcel. And private company did not see affordable housing as a worthy bet.