Huge supply gap in the Indian housing scene. But is anyone bothered about affordable housing?

Being in the middle of the Indian real estate market, we get calls everyday from people looking for houses. With a weekly classified advertisement in the leading daily of our city over the last three months, we have amassed a list of 1200 names and numbers. These people are mostly serious dudes who are looking for houses. Yet, we do mere double figure sales every month! While more and more people keep calling.

While developers scout for more land and build more luxury projects on paper and reality to boost their balance sheets, is there something that we are totally missing? My father bought his home for INR 3 lacs, some 23 years ago. Its a plush, nice home where I still write these article out of. Today, if you have ten times that money, chances are, you are not going to get anything to live in that is half as convenient or comfortable as this. Get our drift? Project feasibility studies come on our tables every week. Its a high rise, high end apartment complex or a villas project with a price tag that starts in the region where you have to use the 'CR' word to talk prices.

Okay, construction prices are up, and will be for some time. But how about hunting down some cheap land on the outskirts, building basic, neat apartments with open spaces, infrastructure and greenery and peddling it cheap? You could call it affordable housing, you know if you must. Hey developer, form a secondary brand, plan and execute such projects. We don't need imported floor tiles, Roca fittings and gold plated door knobs. Just, airy, spacious, well designed straight line homes where families with modest incomes can live in. Their children can run around and grow up in green, manicured environments to become better human beings. Its not asking for too much.

Announce a project, call up the real estate advisories and we promise you, every one of those leads that are in the 'did not work out' folder of the hard disk will be out, turning into sales by the hour. And yes, there are millions of them waiting. Will we continue to create fake demand by branding and advertisements? Or will we stop for a minute, recognise genuine demand and just supply to meet that demand. The later, makes much more business sense to us.
Over to you developer!