Do FM Joking To Indian About Affordable Home

95% Homeless Indian Cannot Afford 10 lakh, How Can Afford 2 crore

According ET:Oh, these crazy rules! Believe it or not, in his effort to boost low-cost real estate, the Finance Minister has just ended up putting a Rs 2 crore home in the 'affordable housing' category, and how! The question is, how many people can really afford it. Food for thought, this weekend.  But hey! I have some more. Any idea why Pakistan stock market is doing so well despite all the problems infesting the nation and the economy? Make a wild guess, and then read on.  Good way to hook you? Do read and have a great weekend ahead! he Union Budget on February 1 was supposed to be a gamechanger for the struggling housing sector. But the fineprint throws up a different picture. Going by the definition of 'affordable housing', a Rs 2 crore home in Mumbai and a Rs 1.5 crore home in Bangalore will now fit this category. It's a cruel irony for the 20 million families looking for a roof over their heads, 95 per cent of whom cannot afford to buy a house beyond Rs 10 lakh. Going by the promise of 'Housing for all by 2022' made in the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna in 2015, 3 million units should have been completed each year. The ground reality is completion of just 19,255 units in the first year. The challenge before the Finance Minister is to move a tribe of developers focused on premium housing projects to build homes for the poor. The real beneficiary, as of now, seems to be the developers, who can cash in on the subsidies and incentives that come with the catering  to this segment. Introduction of carpet area, overriding the prevailing definition of built-up area was a big change in the Budget. Thus, a carpet area of 30 square metres in the four big metros and of 60 square metres in smaller cities make an affordable house. A 30-square-metre carpet-area home in Mumbai or Delhi, with loading and exemptions, translates into a 500-square- foot one bedroom-hall-kitchen, while a 60-square- metre affordable unit in Bangalore can be pushed up to a 1,000-square- footfoot two-bedroom house. At Rs 40,000 a square foot in Mumbai's Parel area, the affordable unit could be sold at Rs 2 crore; or at Rs 15,000 per square foot, a budget home in Bangalore could fetch Rs 1.5 crore to the builder. Other proposals that benefit the builders are tax relief on unsold stock and tax break for one year after receiving the completion certificate. Has the government defeated the very purpose of the measure by defining affordable by size rather than a cap on co .. on cost? Are these signs of desperation where the government has chewed more than it can eat? Significantly, the home buyer has got very little benefit in this Budget. The incentives are clearly loaded on the supply side and designed to construct more and cheaper homes. Whether this will come about is yet to be seen.