Mata Ganga Khalsa College for Girls, Kottan, Ludhiana, India
Online published on 8 October, 2014.
According to the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation, the shortage in housing in the country's urban areas numbered 24.71 million in 2007. India will face shortage of over 26 million houses by 2012. Demand for residential houses is rising sharply because of growing young working population, increasing urbanization, declining household size resulting in more nuclear families, with growing household income and easy availability of housing loans. The allocation of funds for housing loans at all India level by the commercial banks was Rs. 723.78 crore in 1994–95 and it rose to 8389.10 crore into 2003–04. As against allocation, the achievement of housing finance by commercial in 1994–95 was Rs. 748.61 crore and it rose to 45378.20 crore in 2003–04. During this period the compound growth rate for achievement is (50.8), more than the compound the growth rate for allocation i.e. (27.7). The analysis of bank group wise direct disbursement of housing finance during 1999–2000 to 2003–04 demonstrated that the nationalized banks are dominating the housing finance market in India yet the recent growth of Indian Private Banks particularly in 2002–03 and 2003–04 proves that these banks have to play role in this field yet in the coming years. There are some challenges for the housing finance sector in the form of some problems. The major portion of the houseless population is in low and lower middle income segments. The poor repayment capacity of the borrowers is a major problem for this sector.
