SPPL to build 25,000 affordable houses

There is good news for potential home-buyers eyeing to buy apartments in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). Shivshahi Prakalp Limited (SPPL) has claimed that they have chalked out a plan for apartments measuring between 350 square feet to 500 square feet at Panvel, Karjat, Kalyan, Shil and Turbhe for around Rs 30 to Rs 50 lakh.

SPPL is set to build 25,000 affordable homes and for that it has signed a joint development agreement with eight private developers and landlords who own the land in the MMR region.

Debashish Chakraborty, managing director, SPPL, said, “We in collaboration with the developers who were assigned the work have chalked out the plan and a detailed project report (DPR) will be submitted to the Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (Hudco) within the next 10 days.”

Hudco is a body, which comes under the Central government, and SPPL had also taken its help in evaluating the actual value of the 400-acre land it has identified. Hudco will also provide loans to private developers at lower interest rate when compared to the market rate to fund the project.

A senior bureaucrat from SPPL, said, “We have decided to keep the rates of the apartments between Rs 30 and Rs 50 lakh considering the fact that the homes are being built with an intention of being affordable. Our calculations for deciding the rates is considering that a person who earns an annual income of Rs 6.5 lakh and further multiplying it into their annual income for five years brings it down to somewhere around Rs 35 lakh which can be called the rate of a affordable 1 BHK measuring around 500 square feet.”

He further added, “If there is improvements in granting more floor space index (FSI) of around 3 or 4 from the current 1, it can have a positive impact on pricing the apartments to the minimum level.

However, it has to be noted that the state government is yet to transfer the Rs 500 crore it had promised in August 2015, to contribute for the revival of SPPL. The state-owned company, SPPL, was launched by former housing minister Suresh Jain in 1998, who was at that time a member of Shiv Sena and is now a part of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).