India Infrastructure Report 2018: Making Housing Affordable 1 About Us
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India Infrastructure Report 2018 Making Housing Affordable A Supply-side Reform Agenda for Urban India Graphics and design: How India Lives (howindialives.com) Cover photo: Xavierarnau, iStock, 2015 India Infrastructure Report 2018 Making Housing Affordable A Supply-side Reform Agenda for Urban India India Infrastructure Report 2018: Making Housing Affordable 1 About Us IDFC Institute has been set up as a research-focused think / do tank by IDFC Ltd. to investigate the political, economic and spatial dimensions of India's ongoing transition from a low-income, state-led country to a prosperous market-based economy. Broadly, we support the notion of well–regulated free markets, and inquiry into practices that result in greater, more efficient and equitable development. We strive to provide in-depth, actionable research and recommendations, with a current focus on urbanisation, affordable housing, job creation and state capacity. We also host events to foster cutting-edge and innovative thinking on development issues through informed, candid and substantive conversation. Disclaimer: The analysis in this report is based on research by IDFC Institute (a division of IDFC Foundation). The views expressed in this report are not that of IDFC Limited or any of its affiliates. The copyright of this report is the sole and exclusive property of IDFC Institute. You may use the contents only for non-commercial and personal use, provided IDFC Institute retains all copyright and other proprietary rights contained therein and due acknowledgement is given to IDFC Institute for usage of any content. You shall not, however, reproduce, distribute, redistribute, modify, transmit, reuse, report, or use such contents for public or commercial purposes without IDFC Foundation’s written permission. Suggested citation: India Infrastructure Report 2018: Making Housing Affordable, IDFC Institute, Mumbai, June 2018 Dr Reuben Abraham, CEO and Senior Fellow at IDFC Institute, has not participated in the drafting of this report as he serves on the Board of Directors of an affordable housing provider in India. 2 IDFC Institute Foreword overnment regulations can be justified when A prerequisite to designing policy interventions that there are market failures. Since regulations act have a chance to succeed is to go beyond symptoms G as constraints on action, state interventions and understand root causes of the problem. This report in situations where there are no market failures create provides a diagnostic of the causes of distortions in the distortions. The impact of regulations has been well housing market and their impact on housing provision. understood and examined in economics. They shape In particular, it highlights the role played by existing the rules of the game and thus incentives of actors. In a regulations and processes– both formal and informal– complex and interconnected system, this could lead to the in increasing the cost of housing provision by the private desired outcomes for which they were planned for or have sector. A well-known culprit is restricting Floor-Space unintended consequences. Ronald Coase once said: “I Index (FSI) in many Indian cities. The report estimates don't reject any policy without considering what its results the regulatory burden of FSI and finds that restricting FSI are. If someone says there's going to be regulation, I don't imposes around 300% tax on houses in Mumbai. Building say that regulation will be bad […] What we discover is permits and approvals required from various authorities that most regulation does produce, or has produced in at the centre, state, and local body level not only lead recent times, a worse result.” to delays in project completion but also results in cost escalations – estimated by a few builders to be around 25- Land and real estate markets in Indian cities have been 30% of the total project costs. overly regulated for a long time. Builders in India today are merely responding to incentives created by the current The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business report 2017 regulatory framework. The outcomes of these regulations ranks India 181 out of 190 countries on the parameter are a severe housing shortage in most cities and rising of obtaining construction permits. Price distortions also unaffordability as measured by the ratio of house prices arise due to high stamp duty rates and registration fees to median incomes. This has crowded out not only the levied on property transactions in many states. Finally, poor but also the middle-class households from housing existing housing stock is not put to efficient use since markets in Indian cities. Addressing this situation is a investors who purchase property for capital appreciation vexing policy challenge for centre and state governments. have no incentive to rent out houses due to low rental There is growing acceptance in the policy discourse that yields. Stringent rent control laws make it difficult to evict government programmes in the form of housing schemes tenants or raise rents above the set levels. Therefore, we and direct provision alone may not be sufficient given the not only see reduced investments in rental housing but magnitude of the problem. also an increasing vacant housing stock. Housing is essentially a private good and therefore The policy recommendations put forth in this report focus requires policy interventions by governments both at on 3 aspects: removing regulatory constraints, limiting the centre and the state in order to enable the market to the role of the state to functions such as investing in mass reach greater number of households. In other words, to rapid public transit, opening up access to land, planning change outcomes, existing regulations need to be altered ahead for urban expansion and providing housing for the through policy interventions. Interventions should be very poor, and tracking the health of the housing sector by designed with the aim of reshaping incentives while being improving data collection on crucial parameters. cognizant of the limits to state capacity and resources in implementing any reforms. The politics of the housing The report is timely and makes a critical contribution to situation for the very poor would nevertheless dictate a not only policy thinking on housing in India but also to direct role of the government- either as a provider or a the broad literature on regulatory governance. facilitator, which must be initiated only after removing most distortions from the sector. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will most definitely ease the situation by bringing in accountability and transparency Vijay Kelkar in the sector. Chairman, Thirteenth Finance Commission India Infrastructure Report 2018: Making Housing Affordable 3 4 IDFC Institute Preface ver the last decade, the unavailability amount of research on demand-side interventions of affordable housing has emerged as a to lower the cost of housing, there is limited O key policy concern. Several affordable research on supply-side measures. In keeping with housing schemes have been launched by central and previous IIRs, the idea is to investigate a critical state governments, but have had limited success. and contemporary development challenge, in order Recognising the magnitude of the problem, the to generate well-informed public discussions. current government has made a big push to provide This report is informed by extensive research, formal housing for all, with uninterrupted access to including interviews with experts, academics and water, electricity and sanitation by 2022, the 75th practitioners. We hope our analysis is a useful anniversary of India's independence. The central contribution to the debate on how to achieve the government launched the Pradhan Mantri Awas government's goal of ‘Housing for All’. Yojana in 2015 to meet this target. Yet, despite a sustained political push, progress on the ground I would like to thank the authors, editors and all has been slow, which is indicative of regulatory others who have contributed to this report. constraints as well as distortions in the housing market. This report, which marks the re-launch of our India Infrastructure Report (IIR) series, examines the supply-side constraints to creating a stock of Rajiv Lall affordable housing. While there has been a fair MD and CEO, IDFC Bank India Infrastructure Report 2018: Making Housing Affordable 5 6 IDFC Institute Acknowledgments he IDFC Institute India Infrastructure We owe much of our understanding of the Report 2018 has been a collaborative effort. functioning of housing market to their valuable T This report is a product of the hard work of insights and thank them wholeheartedly for their several people who gave us insights, feedback, data time and support. and research support. We would like to thank our colleagues Prakhar Misra, We are thankful to Gyanendra Badgaiyan, Shirley Tinaz Mistry, Kadambari Shah, and Sharmadha Ballaney, Praveen Chakravarty, Shubhankar Dongre, Srinivasan for their feedback and inputs. We are Sandeep Dutta, Swastik Harish, Komal Hiranandani, indebted to all IDFC Institute interns who worked Sriram Kalyanaraman, Pankaj Kapoor, Parth on this report for their excellent research support. Khare, Rajesh Krishnan, C. V. Madhukar, Santhosh We would like to thank Linda Bedenik, Pallavi Mathew, Madhusudhan Menon, Govind Mohan, Bichu, Anant Garg, Tushar Kanade, Jasleen Kaur, Gulzar Natarajan, Venkatesh Panchapagesan, Akshaya Krishnan, Reshu Natani,