Housing projects may face more delays ahead

Delayed housing projects have become common in India—a recent study said one-fourth of all residential projects in the country are delayed—and the problem is likely to get a lot worse going by the sheer number of apartments scheduled for delivery till 2016.

Developers in the National Capital Region, for example, have committed to deliver more than 5.7 lakh apartments between 2013 and 2016, which is almost six times the number of houses they built in the preceding four years. The story is similar across Indian cities.

With many developers facing a fund crunch, it is unlikely that the industry will amass enough resources to scale up building and delivery so dramatically, particularly when the economy is going through a slowdown.