Tata Housing Development Company would invest up to Rs 3,000 crore next fiscal to develop affordable homes across the country. The company already has five projects in the affordable segment and plans to launch 7-8 more projects next fiscal.
The favourable budget outcomes are enhancement of priority home loan limit to Rs. 25 lakhs from Rs. 20 lakhs and extension of interest subvention of 1% up to Rs 15 lakhs.
Backed by strong economic growth and impressive fiscal consolidation, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) believes that the finance minister has done a commendable job by continuing the focus on infrastructure development, which has been a key contributor to the inclusive growth in the country.
The budget speech indicated further progress on the Direct Tax Code (DTC) as well as the GST – both critical measures, which is a welcome move. Though, I feel that it would have been better for the industry if GST was also rolled out along with the DTC.
The Finance Minister seems to be getting more appreciation than brickbats for renewing focus on the housing needs of Aam Aadmi. Even the real estate sector is divided and while the long awaited demands have not been fulfilled, a section of the realtors with affordable housing projects have appreciated the efforts.
Maharashtra Chambers of Housing Industry (MCHI), most prominent body of the real estate developers today described the Union Budget presented by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as “Budget with few positive steps focused on the common man who is interested in buying a house in rural and urban areas”.
The Budget is relying heavily on maintaining the trajectory of growth in the economy to provide solutions for inclusive growth that touch the ‘Aam Aadmi’ and parallelly stressing on governance aspects, which hopefully will be covered separately through concrete action plans to deal with the menace of unaccounted wealth. The trend for consolidation is expected to continue.
The budget of 2011-12 has certainly given due importance to the affordable sector. The current scheme of interest subvention on 1 percent on housing loans is now extended to Rs 15 lakhs where the cost should not exceed 25 lakh.
The unfulfilled demand of more than 24 million houses in the country needs large scale impetus to achieve desired results. Allowing deduction for investment into affordable housing is a welcome step and will surely boost morale of housing industry and will accelerate investments in affordable housing.
Affordable Housing development is expected to be encouraged with the announcement of a new Housing Mortgage Guarantee Fund which will cover the risk of Housing Finance Companies for lending to less advantaged sections of society.