Ownership Housing

This article attempts to capture the story of an informally employed low-income household who, with the help of informal financial agents, successfully navigated the informal-formal space of housing finance to buy the house of their choice. The article starts with contextualising the accessibility and affordability constraints for housing finance faced by low-income households. Following this, we discuss a case study of an informally employed home loan borrower, explaining the negotiations playing at the cusp of the informal-formal. Lastly, we deliberate upon the roles of lending institutions, specifically during the COVID-19 crisis and the financial recovery of the home loan industry.

This is the second post in a series on the India Housing Report focusing on digital technology and tech entrepreneurship in housing, where we try and examine what motivates entrepreneurs in this area, the challenges and potential of using digital solutions, and whether India is ready for such innovative products in the informal housing market. In this piece, we interview Ganesh Shankar, Co-Founder of Homehub, about their product and services.

Governments have come up with several schemes to address the housing deficit for low-income households, including the construction and sale of public housing at subsidised prices, which are then allocated to applicants by lottery. This piece presents the findings of a recent study of 834 total winners and non-winners of such lotteries run by the Maharashtra Housing And Development Authority in Mumbai. The study finds large differences between winners and non-winners three to five years after the lotteries were held. It finds that the provision of this housing, as an asset, changed the lives of beneficiaries positively, and identifies the lack of involuntary displacement as a key component to this change.

A report on IHR’s first webinar on Friday, 30th July on housing finance access to those with unclear titles. With experience across rural and urban contexts, the panel discussion revealed the complexities of the issue and highlighted potential directions for intervention.

This case study describes a unique product and operational mechanism of mainstream housing finance provision in an environment with absent or poor-quality home ownership titles.

The common narrative of most talk shows, media articles, and investor presentations suggests consolidation in the real estate market in recent years. The general perception is that demonetization and introduction of RERA and GST compliances have made real estate a business of deep pockets where smaller developers have been or are being acquired by the large developers and there is massive consolidation in the market. However, data from Liases Foras shows a completely different story. 

India’s urbanising middle class is at the brink of an unprecedented increase in residential cooling demand. New research by Centre for Policy Research and the University of Oxford answers a set of fundamental questions around India’s cooling transition.

This is the second in a series of data tales that looks into the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) panel dataset (2005-06 and 2011-12) to portray certain trends on the nature and profile of house ownership, renting and purchase in urban India. This part looks into the variation in the ownership of new houses based on size of houses and size of the households, to get an idea about which segment of the housing market has become more preferable than others over time.

This is the first in a series of data tales that looks into the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) panel dataset (2005-06 and 2011-12) to portray certain trends on the nature and profile of house ownership, renting and purchase in urban India. While the previous series provided a comprehensive picture of housing supply in urban India, this one will focus more on the demand side parameters; such as profiles of buyers and renters in the housing market of these cities.

The private residential real estate market in urban India is diverse, and housing typologies vary within and across geographies. This is the third in a series of data pieces highlighting some of the characteristics of private real estate market in India across selected geographies between 2009-2019, based on data provided by Liases Foras, India’s only non-broking real-estate research company.