Ownership Housing

The pattern of house ownership in India varies significantly between rural and urban areas. As against 95% in rural areas, only 69% of the total households in India own houses. This pattern is not surprising as a large share of the total urban population are migrants. This note provides an overview of the house ownership in urban India.

The COVID-19 pandemic has badly affected the real estate sector in India, which was already struggling with a number of issues including sluggish sales. To get an understanding of what this means for the housing market, the IHR team spoke to Pankaj Kapoor, Managing Director, Liases Foras, which conducts data-driven market research on the real estate sector in India. We asked him about the effects of the pandemic and future prospects for the sector, which is an important supplier of housing in India.

Housing is one of the basic necessities of life and the right to housing and adequate shelter is guaranteed in the Directive Principles of State Policy enshrined in the Constitution of India.

Cities in poorer countries are home to a heterogeneous mix of tenures: owners, landlords, tenants and sharers jostle for residential accommodation in pursuit of urban livelihoods and social well-being.

Studies across the world have shown the presence of rental housing in almost all informal and slum settlements. This research is an attempt to understand rental housing within the informal housing and discerning its characteristics in comparison to the informal sector owner-occupied housing in the city of Rajkot in Gujarat.