Which Indian states face the maximum affordable housing shortage?

If you’ve ever tried house-hunting in one of India’s urban cities, you must be well-aware how aggravatingly difficult the process can be.

In a country with a burgeoning population, a significant share of which is increasingly willing to migrate to urban centres for jobs and unplanned development taking place in several upcoming cities, a shortage of urban housing is almost to be expected.

But how bad is the problem?

A recent Cushman & Wakefield research report sought to put a number to the issue and found, using data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MHUPA), India had a shortage of 18.8 million urban housing units in 2012: 95 percent of the housing shortage was concentrated among the economically weaker sections and low income housing groups.

According to the 2011 census, India has a population of 1.2 billion citizens; 31.1 percent of the population or around 377 million people reside in urban centres.The Planning Commission has said that urban India will be home to 600 million people by 2031, an increase of 59 percent from 2011.

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Uttar Pradesh topped the list with a shortage of over three million urban housing units, followed by Maharashtra (1.9 million units). West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu fell short by 1.3 million units each.

The report says that demand for urban housing will scale up by nearly 12 million units by 2017 based on just the current growth of population and around 23 percent of this demand will come from the top eight cities of India .By 2021, the urban population is expected to increase to nearly 500 million, totaling to about 35 percent of the total population of India.

Cushman and Wakefield suggests building integrated townships, pushing redevelopment projects and increasing FSI limits to reduce the housing shortages.

The low income housing segment is waiting to be tapped into, especially by private developers. A 2013 Deloitte report approximated the segment at 22 million households with an estimated opportunity size of Rs 1,100,000 crore ($245 billion).