Brand reliability and trustworthiness leading factor for buyers of Affordable Housing

International Property Consultant Knight Frank in association with Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) today released a report “Affordable Housing- Know your customer”. The latest RICS – Knight Frank report captures findings of a market survey that was conducted with homebuyers across 15 cities in India to understand the expectations of the urban end - users for ideal affordable housing. Homebuyers ranging from age 23 to 66 were surveyed and the engagement methods primarily used were Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) – Qualitative Research and Structured Questionnaires based interactions – Quantitative Research.

KEY FINDINGS

• While purchasing an affordable housing property, product quality ranked as the 1^st key parameter followed by Brand Name.
• 80% homebuyers put cost as the topmost consideration while buying a home followed by safety and security for 71% for homebuyers
• 52%homebuyers highlighted parking space as a major gap in terms of their requirements in their current residences, followed by adequate security, playground and availability of public transport accounted for 43% each.
• 53% homebuyers said that self-use is the main purchase driver. While 48% highlighted better location and 44% expanding family size, amongst others as important drivers for their decision to buy houses.
• As per Knight Frank’s market survey, customers perceive the below mention brands  as top 10 developers providing affordable housing

o   Provident Housing

o   Mahindra Lifespaces

o   PS Group

o   Prestige Group

o   Lodha Group

o   ATS Homekraft

o   Signature Global

o   TATA Value Homes

o   Godrej Properties

o   Ashiana Group

Nimish Gupta FRICS, Managing Director, South Asia - RICS said, “Housing is one of the most fundamental demands that influence the quality of life. Access to acceptable living conditions is an elementary human need, which affects individuals at many levels as it provides shelter, safety, security and for most of us represents the most significant investment that we will ever make during our lifetime. The affordable home segment offers great potential which is yet to be fully explored. This segment will definitely perform better when affordable housing projects ‘on-ground’, while catering to the needs of customers on security, safety and lifestyle attributes are successfully executed and energies stay focussed on delivering these within the promised cost and timeframes.”

 

Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director of Knight Frank India said “Customers of affordable housing are highly value conscious and since they normally buy a house once in their life time, the focus is more on developer credibility. Today, when most of the stake holders in real estate sector are boarding the affordable housing bandwagon, they need to first understand their consumers before converting their ideas into reality. This explicitly explains why few of the affordable housing developers, who are keeping customer preferences on the forefront are succeeding in this sector while most of the others are not.”