MMR tops the list with 880 delayed housing projects, Hyderabad second

As many as 880 housing projects in the Mumbai metropolitan region (MMR) have been delayed by over five years for various reasons and are likely to see completing only after 2020, a recent survey said.

According to a study by property portal PropTiger.com, which analyses 10 prime residential markets, as many as 1665 RERA-registered projects are delayed by over five years.

While the MMR tops the list with 880 delayed projects constituting of over 200,000 units are concentrated in the MMR market, Hyderabad ranks second with 276 incomplete projects followed by Pune with 241 projects.

In terms of units, however, Hyderabad has one of the lowest score, at 15,138 delayed units, in the list of 10 cities, while Pune has over 47,000 housing units delayed for more than half a decade would reach completion post-2020.

The markets covered in the analysis are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida-Greater Noida and Pune.

While the budget range for housing projects in the MMR has been kept at Rs 2 crore, it is less than Rs 1.50 crore for other markets, units of only up to a 200-square-metre carpet area has been covered in the analysis.

On the other hand, a total of 125 projects are delayed across Noida, Greater Noida and Gurugram markets, consisting of over one lakh housing units, it said.

"Liquidity issues could be cited as the single-biggest reason behind project delays in India, a phenomenon that has had an absolutely negative impact on buyer sentiment. The Rs 25,000-crore lifeline extended by the government in the form of an AIF would change much of that," Elara Technologies GroupCOO Mani Rangarajan said.

He further said that housing projects in the MMR are more likely to meet the net-worth-positive and litigation-free conditions set under the AIF.

"This would mean a large part of the fund could be spent on completing projects in the Mumbai market. Because Mumbai is an expensive property market, the cost of project completion here would be comparatively lower than the ultimate price realisation. This would only help Mumbais case further," Rangarajan added.

In terms of units, however, Hyderabad has one of the lowest score, at 15,138 delayed homes, in the list of 10 cities. In Pune, over 47,000 housing units delayed for more than half a decade would reach completion post-2020, data show.

Chennai has the lowest number of delayed projects (24) as well as units (11,679), primarily because of the size of housing projects in this property market is comparatively smaller.

"Typically, builders launch housing projects with 50 units or less in Chennai which could be completed in a shorter time span. The chances of cost overruns in such projects are also low," the report said.