Friday, December 5, 2008

Low Cost Housing: The next step to beat housing crisis woes

In an earlier blog on September 4th 2008, i had made a few comments on the fact that many of the realty industry giants: DLF, Unitech, Hiranandani and many others have notable projects which are mostly HIG or MIG+ ones. These companies had not invested much in the economy housing projects or projects which would be less than 10 lakhs/ 450 - 800 square foot size. Read point no 6.7.8 in the blog: http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html.

Three months later, now that the crushing reality of financial crisis and recession is rumbling the world economy, the first steps have now been taken by large realtors towards these economy housing schemes. http://news.in.msn.com/business/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1715713. Interestingly the reasons sighted for shifting focus from HIG and MIG+ housing is

1. Higher diversity in projects leading to better cash flows
2. Be a part of the Priority sector leding to allow banks refinance at concessional rates and fulfill norms of directing lending
3. The Government believes that low cost housing finance may a part of the solutions package to give the much needed fillip to the housing sector in India.