New Delhi: Buying a flat constructed by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) will soon be a possibility for those who already own a house or plot in the city, with the agency announcing Tuesday that it has done away with a decades-old restriction.
The DDA now awaits a final nod from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to implement the relaxation.
The decision is largely aimed at ensuring that fresh housing stock does not go unsold when old inventory is already piling up, with a senior DDA official stating that the agency will launch a regular housing scheme in November, with 20,000 flats up for sale.
In its press note issued Tuesday, the DDA accepted that the restriction — under which residents who own a house or land in Delhi were ineligible for previous housing schemes — had affected the sale of its flats.
Until now, the relaxation in the eligibility criteria was limited to the sale of DDA’s unsold flats that are currently being offered on a ‘first come, first serve’ (FCFS) basis. But now, the relaxation will apply to all schemes.
“We did not want to delay this [relaxation] further, because our capital gets stuck in projects where the yield is poor. The now-relaxed eligibility condition was relevant at a time when there was a scarcity of affordable housing in Delhi. But that scenario has changed over the years. Look at Narela, most of our flats, including affordable houses, are lying unsold,” the senior DDA official mentioned earlier told ThePrint, not wanting to be named.
The extent of financial loss borne by the DDA due to unsold inventory dates back to 2014, with all housing schemes since then finding few takers, while the agency has been left with a crushing pile-up of 16,000 unsold houses, while another 24,000 are yet to be put on sale.
In July 2022, the DDA was also pulled up by Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena, who is also the agency chairperson, over its liabilities that exceeded Rs 10,000 crore at the time. Senior DDA officials said this happened mainly due to failure in housing operations.
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New scheme, mostly new inventory
For the housing scheme to be launched in November, a private real estate agency has been roped in to study and analyse data provided by the DDA, including on previous housing scheme failures, it is learnt.
“Through the FCFS model, we have observed that such relaxations improve the buyer response. This relaxation should have been implemented in entirety much earlier, this is also because the requirements of families have changed, a single flat no longer suffices. However, we are confident that this relaxation will bring results,” said the senior DDA official.
The senior DDA official quoted earlier said that the scheme will be launched only after the findings are tabled before the authority. “This is mainly because we would like to implement the recommendations in the report. This can include preferential location charges and other recommendations to bridge the gap between demand and supply.”
Unlike the FCFS model, the DDA’s upcoming scheme will use the regular drawing of lots method for allotment of flats.
Of the 20,000 flats that will be put up for sale as part of this scheme, over 90 per cent are newly constructed. These include 641 middle income group flats (MIG) — two bedroom hall and kitchen (BHK) — and 274 economically weaker section flats (1 BHK) in the city’s Loknayak Puram.
The inventory will also include 14 luxury penthouses, 946 higher income flats (3 BHKs), and 117 super HIG flats, which include quarters for help, all of which are based in Dwarka’s Sector 19-B.
“The remaining 10 percent of the housing inventory on sale in the scheme will consist of previously unsold flats in Vasant Kunj, Dwarka and other areas where more than 25 percent of the housing inventory has been sold,” said the senior DDA official, adding that details of the remaining locations will be made public soon.
The DDA believes that it has found some relief in disposing off its unsold inventory through the ‘first come, first serve’ (FCFS) model, where the relaxation in eligibility conditions was first experimented with.
Of the 5,623 flats that were put on sale under the FCFS scheme, a total of 1,740 flats have been sold while the scheme will continue to remain in operation till the inventory sells out or till when the DDA decides to call it a day.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)