Mumbai has taken a significant lead when it comes to affordable housing in the country. As per reports, new launches in this category have gone up by a whopping 27% in Mumbai after the Government’s move to bestow infrastructure status to affordable housing. 26,000+ new housing units have already been launched in this category in 2017 and out of these launches, a handsome 40% are in Mumbai or 10,500 units followed by many projects in Kolkata and Pune. There has been a clear decline in other segments with launches in the premium/high end and luxury categories slumping by 66% and 84% respectively.
According to experts, affordable housing is a win-win proposition for buyers and developers alike and hence there is huge demand. The Government’s emphasis on the sector will help developers get more funding options including FDI, ECB and debt financing from national lenders at attractive rates. However, affordable housing projects face major challenges in key Tier 1 cities where availability and land costs are both issues in well-known locations. Overall launches of residential projects went down by around 33% to 60,000 units in the first three quarters of 2017 approximately. All cities witnessed a drop in new project launches with the exception of Mumbai, majorly due to the combined effect of GST and RERA.
The Indian Government has targeted the delivery of 1.2 crore affordable housing units by the year 2022 and this sector should keep witnessing this growth momentum. Mumbai witnessed 1% growth and the highest number of residential project launches until September, 2017 with 19,400 new units. The affordable housing sector posted close to 10,000 units, witnessing growth of 300% in comparison to the same period last year. Mumbai was followed by Pune and Bangalore with 8,400 and 8,200 units respectively, which indicates declines of 41% and 48% respectively with regard to the number of newly launched units. Chennai witnessed more than 50% decline in terms of new launches and only 2,700 new units were available on account of a huge slowdown.
In the meantime, Xrbia Developers is planning to launch a whopping 50,000 affordable housing units in key city centre areas throughout Mumbai and Pune in the last quarter of 2017. These projects will be launched in Dhanori, Balewadi and Market Yard at Pune and across Kandivali, Thane, Karjat and Mira Road in Mumbai. Apartments will be priced at Rs.50 lakh for 1 BHK configurations and at Rs.80 lakh for 2 BHK configurations. The former will be sized (carpet area) between 180-230 sq. ft. and the latter will be sized at 305 sq. ft. Xrbia has a target of delivering 100 cities which are future ready by the year 2030.
