Housing Affordability Has Worsened In India, Says RBI
Homes have become less affordable in the last four years, says RBI.
Housing affordability worsened in India in the last four years.
Indians now spend a bigger proportion of what they earn on buying a home than in 2015, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s residential asset price monitoring survey of 13 cities. The house-price-to-monthly-income ratio has risen from 56.1 in March 2015 to 61.5 in March 2019. The ratio has remained above 60 since December 2015.
Mumbai continues to be the least affordable city for housing, with a ratio of 74.4 as of March compared with 64.1 four years earlier. And it’s consistently remained above 70 since March 2017. Bhubaneshwar, with a ratio of 54.3, is the most affordable city in India.
Median loan-to-value dropped across categories over 12 months ended March, according to the survey. The ratio for all types of lenders fell to 69.6 percent from 70.8 percent during the period.
Only foreign banks saw their own loan-to-value ratio increase, but that’s still lower than any other category of lender in India.
The median ratio of equated monthly instalments-to-the income of homebuyers remained steady at 37-38 percent over the last two years, according to the RBI. In case of cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Pune, the proportion of the EMI to income increased in the last two years.