Realtors Urge Stamp Duty Cut to Revive Affordable Housing Demand

The New Delhi report has stated that National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) demanded that states reduce stamp duty on affordable houses below ₹45 lakh, indicating that due to high transaction costs, they are affecting the buyers and creating a bad scene of urban housing shortages for the country.

Speaking at NAREDCO’s annual convention, the president of the association, G Hari Babu, said that currently, sales and new launches are sharply declining due to land and construction cost escalation in the affordable segment. “States should bring down the stamp duty on registration of affordable homes to 1% for women and 3% for men, compared with the current 5% to 10% range across states,” he said.

He also stressed the need for states to initiate slum redevelopment projects to expedite supply, suggesting that the more this is delayed, the wider the deficit in affordable housing will grow.

Niranjan Hiranandani, chairman of NAREDCO, expressed concern, saying that the affordable housing sector, which was once a backbone of India’s residential real estate market, is facing an alarming slump.

Along with Knight Frank India, NAREDCO has released a joint report titled “Affordable Housing: Tackling Urban Housing Deficit Through Supply-Side Reforms.” The joint study brought forth the supply-side constraints and indicated that the ratio of launches to sales of units priced up to ₹50 lakh across India’s eight prime cities has crashed to 0.36 in 2025 (till June). A sharp dip is observed when it now stands at 1.05 in 2019 and 1.30 in 2020, which shows the scarcity of the new project is much less than the demand.

Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Ahmedabad are the eight cities studied by the research.

The report stands for their expectation of a total dearth of around 9.4 million affordable housing units in the country today, which would stretch to nearly 30 million units by 2030 unless any mitigation work is undertaken.

Stakeholders in the industry advocate that the stamp duty cut and redevelopment hassles would revive the interest of developers in the affordable segment and make homeownership within the reach of lower- and middle-income groups.