2014 may see growth of low-cost housing demand

As affordable housing is much in demand for lower income group in the country, developers feel that the year 2014 may witness the growth of low cost housing demand in India.

Vikram Jain, Lead, Low-income housing practice at Monitor Deloitte, a management consulting firm, said, “There is a demand for 15 million homes and the demand for these homes comes from buyers with an income of Rs 10,000-25,000 per month.”

“The solution to the demand for affordable housing is to build homes with clear title, provide water and electricity. The idea is to build small flats of 229 sq ft flat in space, with no wastage of space, costing around Rs 8 lakh,” he said at a
two-day conclave held in New Delhi recently.

The developers believe that there has been a lot of progress on the affordable housing front, a lot more needs to be done to give a boost to this segment of housing. Besides, they feel that there is an urgency in setting up of a Real Estate Regulator to help growth of the country’s GDP.

Lalit Kumar Jain, chairman, CREDAI, ruled that the real estate sector receives a step motherly treatment from the government. “The real estate sector’s contribution to GDP is 6.2 per cent and it employs over 1 crore people. Yet, you have ignored the sector,” Jain said.

Jain said there is a lot of frustration among real estate developers over the treatment meted out to the sector. “The infrastructure sector gets 10 year moratorium but if we don’t pay our loan within 90 days, it goes into default. We try to do our work with transparency then why are we shunned by the government,” he said.

Rajnath Singh, BJP president, asked real estate developers to send a list of its demands to the party, so that they can be included in the BJP’s Lok Sabha election manifesto. “We will try and do our best for the sector,” he said.

Singh said the BJP believes housing sector, infrastructure sector and manufacturing sector should be given importance. “Manufacturing sector growth should have been good. There is no dearth of demand in international market but we are not producing enough to export. The result is we are importing more and exporting less. This is the reason for increase in current account deficit, external debt and weakening rupee. We need a comprehensive thinking to solve this problem,” said Singh adding that the party has formed a team to prepare a vision document.