MHADA offers expensive flats to recover losses

Property buyers seeking affordable houses this year in the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority’s (MHADA) lottery will be surprised to know that the price of the most expensive flat this year has gone up to Rs 1.61 crore.

The prices of these flats located at Powai are similar to the current market prices. The authority will include these 168 flats in the Higher Income Group (HIG).

However, the authority claims that they offer expensive flats in the HIG to recover huge losses suffered by selling flats of Economic Weaker Section (EWS) and Lower Income Groups (LIG).

However, developers disagreed with such exorbitant prices offered by authority which aims to provide affordable housing. Developers said the authority should not bother about recovering losses while it is facing land scarcity and have the least number of flats to offer in the lottery.

The property rates at Tunga, according to the ready reckoner, are around Rs 21,000 per sq ft for carpet area. The same rates are applied by MHADA for its flat at Powai that are fixed at more than Rs 1 crore.

Interestingly, a senior official said these are some of the most expensive flats in MHADA’s history. The official added, “In the affordable housing section, we only aim to recover the construction cost. However, we suffer huge losses by selling flats for the weaker section. By selling these flats, we manage to recover some amount in order to fund future projects.”

On the other hand, Anand Gupta, former spokesperson of the Builders’ Association of India, questioned the authority’s agenda of affordable housing. He said the authority uses its constitutional rights to acquire land at cheap rates and then sell it at market value.

Gupta added, “What is the use of calling it affordable housing when their flat rates are equal to what private developers offer? Also, they do not build luxurious flats and similarly should sell them at reasonable rates so that it is affordable for the lower and middle income group. The authority should offer flats at reasonable rates.”

There are 168 such flats located at Powai, newly constructed and unlike other flats, and are not from the old lottery. These flats are around 740 square ft because of which they are one of the prime flats of this year’s lottery. The authority is offering the least number of flats this year. Around 700-800 flats will be available in the lottery this year for the Mumbai region, whereas the Konkan division has not announced its lottery this year.