Continuous demand for luxury real estate may not sustain: Prashant Thakur, Anarock Group

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

If you want a sustainable, long-lasting growth for the real estate industry, it has to be an overall participation and that comes from the bottom of the pyramid, says Prashant Thakur, Regional Director & Head of Research, Anarock Group. Edited excerpts:

There is a big scheme in the offing from the government side. A $7.5 billion worth of scheme to give the further fillip to urban middle class. Will this really give a lot of push to the realty sector, which is already in massive momentum? How long and potential could this be?
There has been a good upsurge in the overall sales but what we have seen is that while the upper segment is doing quite well, the lower and affordable segment has been kind of lagging behind, and there are a couple of reasons behind it. While the rise in interest rate did not impact the upper and mid-upper too much, the affordable segment got impacted because of interest rate increase; the home loan eligibility of these borrowers came down because most of them work in either unorganised sector or they do not have a steady income source, I am talking about buyers of affordable housing.

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What also happened was that because of the increase in material cost, the cost of overall affordable housing went up. So in my opinion, any subsidy, or let us say bringing back the CLSS scheme which gives interest subvention to the buyers of affordable housing will give a push to this segment as well. When you combine the already well-doing upper segment, and when this