Almost 10% of the lucky winners of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) lottery have surrendered the homes they won less than a month ago, underscoring the point that government homes arent affordable anymore. This year, the Mumbai Board of the MHADA offered 4,082 tenements for sale through its lottery draw. Surprisingly, not even one application was received for four of the 4,082 homes and the allotment process was initiated for just 4,078 units.
Of these 4,078 allottees, so far, 398 winners have surrendered their chance to purchase a MHADA home. Seventy others have yet to either accept or surrender their claims, according to data accessed by The Free Press Journal. These were the statistics available as on September 4.
On Monday, 3,515 provisional offer letters were issued online by the MHADA. The housing lottery draw was held on August 14. For 4,082 houses available in this edition of the lottery draw, there were 1,20,144 eligible applications. Meanwhile, MHADA Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Sanjeev Jaiswal has said that the winners who had submitted acceptance letters, have received their provisional offer letters in record time, as against the 10 months to the 1.5-year period the process took earlier.
'Affordable' homes remain unaffordable
However, what remains unaddressed is the high and unaffordable prices of the supposedly affordable homes. Even the BJP MLA from Badnapur, Narayan Kuche, who won two homes and was also waitlisted, has been unable to purchase MHADAs costliest home, as he is unable to arrange a home loan for the purpose the home being referenced is the one at Crescent Tower, Tardeo, costing Rs 7.58 crore.
On May 24, The Free Press Journal had reported about the issue of affordability of these homes. Take for instance, a 553 sq-ft flat at D N Nagar, Andheri West, for the low-income group, priced at more than Rs 1.61 crore. Only those with an annual family income in the range of Rs 9 lakh or more are eligible to apply.
A winner with a taxable income of Rs 75,000 per month, would be eligible for a home loan of Rs 40 lakh, at an interest rate of 8.5 per cent per annum. This means, the winner will have to arrange for a minimum of Rs 1.21 crore, other than from having to shell out money for stamp duty, registration, one years maintenance in advance and other costs, which works out to an additional amount of Rs 12 lakh at the minimum. Therefore, a sum of Rs 1.33 crore would have to be arranged by the winning applicant from their own savings or informal borrowings.
When Jaiswal was asked about the unaffordable prices, he was mum on the subject of whether the MHADA or state government would take stock of the pricing issue. For the 90 per cent with the adequate financial bandwidth, it is now time to shell out the payment. The latest system offers winners the flexibility to choose between two options, that is, making 100 per cent payment within 45 days or paying 25 per cent of the total cost of the flat within 45 days and the remaining 75 per cent within 60 days. There also is a 90-day grace period allocated to the winners.
