An accountant in a mid-sized company, Rahul Sharma from Moradabad has been living in Delhi since 2013. For the past many years, 35-year-old Sharma had been dreaming of buying a home in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR). He was resigned to the fact that with his budget, he could only get a small house in the affordable housing segment. But when he finally entered the market last year, he picked a regular-sized property in Noida Extension for around Rs 65 lakh. With two full-sized bedrooms, a dining room, a drawing room and a study-cum-kids room, the apartment is much larger than what he had planned for earlier. As for his budget, he ended up spending at least Rs 20 lakh more than his initial estimate. That, however, didn’t stop him from taking the plunge. And although he had to dip into his family’s savings for that extra amount, the apartment is sufficient for his family’s needs. “We wanted a larger home. If I had gone for an affordable home, I would have had to sacrifice on the quality of construction and settle for a 60 sq. m apartment,” says Sharma.
While buying a regular-sized flat instead of an affordable house measuring 60 sq. m meant that he had to forego the subsidy he may have got under the government’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) Mission, for his family, compromising on the quality and size of their first home didn’t feel right. After all, most people from middle-income backgrounds purchase only one house during their lifetime. “So, why not strive for the best [that one can afford]?” he asks.
Sharma is not alone. Thousands of homebuyers who dream of purchasing their first property—especially in the affordable housing segment—are increasingly looking for better options. And if industry trends are anything to go by, India’s affordable homes segment is on a downward path. As homebuyers shy away from the segment, the share of affordable homes in the overall residential real estate market is shrinking fast. From a high of 51 per cent in 2019, the share of affordable homes in overall residential sales across the Top 8 markets (Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Delhi NCR, Kolkata and Ahmedabad) in India fell to 40 per cent in 2022. And, as homebuyers’ willingness to purchase affordable houses decline and the costs of construction surge, developers are also moving away from the segment.
The fall in new project launches in the segment is even starker. While in 2019, over 50 per cent of the new residential units launched in these cities (markets) were in the affordable segment, the share has come down to 31 per cent in 2022. According to Anuj Puri, Chairman of real estate consultancy Anarock Group, the affordable housing segment is in dire straits. He says that in spite of the major disruptions in 2020 and 2021, the residential real estate market had bounced back by early 2022, registering high double-digit growth in sales and new launches. “However, there seems to be one major ‘fatality’; that is affordable housing. Once the source of considerable political hype, this segment is not merely just languishing today—it seems to be in the ICU,” he says.
Agrees Yash Miglani, MD of Migsun Group—a real estate developer that works extensively in the Noida, Greater Noida and Rajnagar Extension micro markets of Delhi NCR. “With most mid-housing buyers severely affected on many levels by the global coronavirus pandemic, the affordable housing sector had gone through a rough patch post-pandemic,” he says.
Pradeep Aggarwal, Chairman of real estate developer Signature Global, says that since 2015, his Gurugram-headquartered firm has built and delivered over 8,200 affordable homes. But over the past three years, the share of affordable homes in his portfolio has shrunk, with the focus shifting towards mid-segment houses. After the Covid-19 waves declined in 2022, developers have been increasingly looking at the mid-income homes segment than the affordable category, says Aggarwal. “Today, customers are looking for larger units, having three bedrooms rather than compact 2BHK apartments. As a result, developers who used to launch Rs 30-40 lakh apartments under the affordable category are coming up with new projects in the Rs 50-70 lakh price range,” he says.
Aggarwal, who started his journey in the real estate business by building affordable homes, cites increasing raw material costs due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, apart from changing consumer preferences post-Covid-19, for this movement to higher-priced segments. “The cost of key raw materials has surged steadily since the war. Additionally, as demand for residential homes peaked across markets, it resulted in a surge in new launches; land prices have also gone up significantly in the past one and a half years. These factors are making affordable projects, especially those priced below Rs 40 lakh a unit, unviable,” says Aggarwal. But homebuyers’ willingness to purchase homes has hardly been affected, he argues. “That’s the reason why the number of units sold continues to surge... [as does] the share of pricier units in the overall market. As the size of the mid- and premium-segment housing swells, developers tend to move towards them as they offer better returns.”
Latest data from REA India—that owns proptech platforms such as Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com—shows that amid the falling share of affordable homes in the market, the share of pricier houses has surged, with those priced between Rs 45 lakh and Rs 99 lakh now forming 37 per cent of the market, compared to 33 per cent in 2019. Moreover, homes priced above Rs 1 crore have gained the most. While in 2019 they accounted for only 16 per cent of the market in the Top 8 cities, in 2022 their share went up to 23 per cent.
Vikas Wadhawan, Group CFO of REA India, says that the pandemic has played a key role in the current shift in the market where consumers who can afford it are buying larger units—a 3BHK or 3BHK with study—which are usually not available in the affordable category. “Apart from increasing costs of construction, this has led to a shift away from the [lower-priced] segment,” he says, adding that the government needs to rationalise the price cap on affordable homes based on location, as the price of land and construction costs vary widely across markets.
According to Amit Modi, Director at County Group and President of CREDAI Western UP chapter, increasing costs of construction and land prices are pushing affordable projects further away from cities. “The state of the affordable housing sector in NCR is in flux due to the rapid pace at which once-affordable localities are outpacing their affordability tag and entering mid-range categories. Even smaller units, like 1BHK and 2BHK apartments, have become unaffordable,” he says, adding that as a result, developers are seeking large parcels of cheap land on the outskirts of cities.
Apart from high input costs, the lack of government support has further aggravated the situation on the ground, say real estate players. According to Modi, despite recent measures such as the hike in export duty on iron products, reduction in import duty on iron ore and the Finance Minister announcing the government’s intent to reduce cement prices at an interaction with industry members recently, challenges persist. “The GST on cement is currently at 28 per cent—the highest category—making it difficult for developers to reduce costs,” he says. According to him, developers of affordable homes continue to face multiple challenges like the need for more land for development, rising construction costs and limited access to financing. Even though Housing for All continues to be the government’s focus, the affordable housing segment could do with more support from the government, he adds.
Niranjan Hiranandani, co-founder and MD of Mumbai-based real estate major Hiranandani Group, agrees. Hiranandani, who is also the National Vice Chairman of industry body Naredco, says a slew of measures that were demanded by industry stakeholders remain unfulfilled, but the affordable housing segment still has room to grow. While by statute, affordable housing in major cities is defined as units costing up to Rs 45 lakh and measuring not more than 60 sq. m, industry players have demanded several changes in these rules to open up the segment to a larger set of customers and attract more developers. For instance, key demands of the industry have been to increase the price cap on affordable homes to Rs 1 crore in metro cities and granting of industry status to the sector. Hiranandani says raising the price cap would not only help absorb surging costs, but also ensure that a larger number of homebuyers can avail the interest subsidy provided under the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme of the government’s PMAY (U) scheme.
In spite of the current crisis, stakeholders are hopeful about the prospects of the affordable housing segment. They say that if the right measures are introduced, then the segment has the potential to fulfil the home-owning dreams of many families in the lower- and middle-income segments. “This cycle of what was once affordable becoming unaffordable has made it increasingly challenging for low- and middle-income buyers to find suitable housing options. These issues require coordinated efforts from developers, lenders and policymakers as it constitutes a sizeable chunk of the population and a substantial unmet need exists,” says Modi. According to Puri, the government can also consider unlocking its landholdings to make cheaper land available to the developers of affordable housing projects. “Another key intervention that... continues to be extremely pertinent, is revising the price bandwidth for homes that qualify for the government’s various incentives to affordable housing buyers. The current Rs 45 lakh-limit means that buyers cannot look anywhere within the city limits, but must turn to the infrastructure-deficient outer suburbs,” he says.
As the situation unfolds, market dynamics are making their presence felt in the affordable residential real estate market, with scarce relief in sight for developers and homebuyers.
@arndutt