Despite Slowdown, India Comes Second In Affordable Homes Reach

Despite the tens of hundreds of stalled residential projects, the country ranks second in having the largest number of affordable homes, says a survey. According to a survey involving nearly 20,450 urban citizens, nearly 73 percent of those polled can afford to buy a new home in their town, says Ipsos India, which carried out the online survey between September 20 and October 4, across 29 countries. It can be recalled that the government on Thursday announced some sops to the nearly crippled realty sector by setting up an AIF window worth Rs 25,000 crore to revive as many as 1,600 stalled residential projects.

The realty sector has not yet recovered from the multiple shocks of note-ban of 2016, and the introduction of regulators and GST and the sector is of late gasping for liquidity breath.

The some of these countries include Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Britain, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Korea, and US among others. According to the survey, China tops the list with 74 percent of polled Chinese saying they can buy homes. "We see a boom in the realty sector in terms of premium to affordable housing projects that have come up/in the pipeline coupled with low interest finance schemes are giving an impetus to this sector," the survey said.

However, the survey noted that the slowdown has led to lower off-take, putting realtors in the lurch. Supply is outstripping demand. Due to the number of scams in the realty sector in the past few years, people are in a wait and watch mode, noted the survey, which also showed that Saudi Arabia stood at the third position followed by the US and Peru with 55 percent people confident of buying homes.

Markets with lack of least availability of affordable homes include Hungary (16 percent), Japan (17), Serbia (19), Poland (25) and Argentina at 32 percent, among others.