Affordable housing needs a push: Credai

The recent Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) decision to hike key interest rates will not have much impact on housing sales, but could delay revival of the sluggish real estate sector. Credai national president Jaxay Shah said this decision may lead to suppressed growth in the Indian real estate sector which has shown substantial resilience over the last 18 months. Though the RBI’s move is made keeping in view the surge in crude oil prices, the real estate sector requires lower rates to provide further thrust to ‘Housing for all’ by 2022. The repo rates should be exempted for creating affordable housing in the smaller cities under the Pradhan MantriAwasYojana (PMAY), he added. There is a growth of 2-3 per cent in the development of affordable housing units. Shah said, Credai is currently trying to understanding the supply-demand patterns in this segment. The association has made several representations to the government to provide incentives to developers to push affordable housing. Not just in metros, affordable housing is picking up in tier-2 and tier-3 cities as well. On the government’s decision to revise carpet area of houses eligible for interest subsidy under credit linked subsidy scheme (CLSS), Shah says, it has liberalised carpet area norm from 120 sq m to 160 sq m for MIG I and from 150 sq m to 200 sq m for MIG II. This is a positive sign for those aspiring MIG home buyer and a big push to ‘Housing for all’. Credai is making its efforts to improve the residential sales from its side and it has recently sold 8 lakh apartments in Maharashtra alone and similar trends are seen across the country.