The small home truth: What affordable housing needs to take off big time

Housing finance firms believe they do the heavy lifting in the sector and must get concessions in lending terms

“At no point in time has affordable housing finance (AHF) looked better despite all the rate hikes and talk of a slowdown,” says Ravi Subramaniam. The managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of Shriram Housing has seen his firm’s book size cross Rs 10,000 crore, making it the third-largest player in the AHF space. Tight underwriting and collection efforts have led to a 125-basis-points (bps) fall in delinquencies in the one-day-past due (DPD) bucket to 4.01 per cent, and by 34 bps in 90-DPD to 0.58 per cent.

HFCs’ loans stood at Rs 13.42 trillion in FY22; and