Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/MintBengaluru/Mumbai: The Union budget on Wednesday proposed to assign infrastructure status to affordable housing projects, in line with the government’s aim to provide housing for all by 2022, sending real estate stocks zooming. “Lenders will also look at it favourably, and banks will have lower risk weightage when giving loans on affordable housing,” he added. The larger objective continues to be to boost the supply of rural housing and augmenting affordable housing in urban areas. “Granting infrastructure status to affordable housing is an extremely positive step to provide a boost to affordable housing development as well as increasing access to capital at lower costs. A good boost to the construction industry that was struggling with reduced number of product launches in real estate in the last couple of years,” said Joe Verghese, managing director at real estate consultancy Colliers International India.

Source: Mint February 01, 2017 09:19 UTC