Affordable housing's real cost

Easier bank credit to real estate comes with associated risks

Among the headline announcements in the 2017-18 Union Budget was an increase in support for affordable housing. Most importantly, affordable housing was given “infrastructure status”. This means that real estate projects that meet “affordability” norms will qualify, like large public or private infrastructure projects, for easier lending. Under the Reserve Bank of India’s criteria for infrastructure lending, the projects will receive bank loans for longer tenures and at a lower rate of interest. Other changes have also been made; the definition of what constitutes an “affordable” house has been relaxed, for example, to allow larger houses to be categorised as