In India, the demand for housing has increased rapidly
due to population growth, migration from rural areas to
urban areas, the decay of the existing housing stock and
breakdown of traditional joint families. The information
technology revolution and rapid growth of knowledge
based industries in recent years have also further
contributed to the already growing acute shortage of
housing India particularly in urban areas. Since housing
requires huge investment, a critical constraint for the
development of housing is lack of finance.
With the entry of commercial banks into housing finance,
the housing sector has witnessed real boom during the
last decade. The growing demand for housing finance
has contributed for rapid growth of banks' lending to
housing sector. Housing finance has now emerged as an important segment of the credit portfolio of banks. Its rate
of growth in the recent years is rapid enough to cause
concern to the regulator. During the year 2003 for
example, the unprecedented interest evinced by almost
all banks in attracting new customers for their housing
loans, has resulted in an increase of 55 percent in
housing finance. In its Annual Report 2002-03, the
Reserve Bank of India expressed its concern in a box
item captioned as Housing Finance: New Driver of Bank
Credit. “The cause for potential worry” it revealed, “is that
by lowering the lending rates, banks are approaching the
cost of funds”. It cautioned, “Banks need to be alert
against an unbridled growth of housing finance and
should take due precaution in the matter of interest rates,
margin, rest period and documentation.”
It is also important to note that the on-going global
financial crisis was mainly caused by housing finance in
US. With the real estate boom and appreciating house
prices, the housing finance spurred competition among
financial institutions to unprecedented levels. Large
number of borrowers, brokers and appraisers inflated
house prices and borrowers income on loan applications.
The banks were confident that potential repayment
problems could be mitigated by ever increasing market
prices for the collateral houses. With the fall in asset
prices, the housing finance by banks ultimately led to
subprime lending crisis. From the housing finance policy
perspective, India has a lesson to draw from this housing
finance subprime crisis. Tarapore Committee has
already drawn the attention of policy makers on the
growing subprime quality of housing finance in India.
The expansion in housing finance has continued
unabated. In March 1990, it constituted only 2.4 percent
of the total bank credit. While according to the latest
Report on Currency and Finance (2005-06), its share
has gone up to 11 percent. The rate of growth of housing
finance since 2000-01, has been about 40 percent.
Excessive speed is bound to result in accidents. This
is evident from the emergence of NPAs. It is estimated
to be around 3 to 4 percent of the net advances. It
is also reported that three of the major players in the
housing finance sector have approached the Asset
Reconstruction Company Ltd (ARCIL) to sell the bad
loans from their home loan portfolios. ARCIL is expected
to purchase a good volume of the bad loans from these
banks at a discount and recover the advances.
Besides direct lending, many public sector banks have
promoted in the past subsidiaries for extending housing