Getting A Real Picture: Why Mapping Existing Homes Is Important

The focus of finding a solution to India's home shortage is often seen tilted towards building new structures. The importance of the existing stock of dwelling units is often underestimated. A greater emphasis on the latter could help India solve its affordable homes shortage to a great extent.

For instance, in countries such as the US, where one can find long-range data on real estate transactions, the amount of transactions that happen in the existing homes per annum is three-four times higher than the number of new homes that enter the residential property market. This shows the crucial role existing dwelling play in feeding the real estate market in that country. 

It is in this context we should evaluate the importance of National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) assisting the Centre in the mission to build homes for all by 2022. Under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) the NRSC signed with the Centre, the two will develop mobile applications to map existing homes and the progress in construction of new homes. Here is why this is important:

• Affordability of homes is solely based on prices. In most cases, new homes entering the market are costlier when compared to the existing ones. However, it is very difficult to collect information on the prices of resale properties in India. Data on rent collected on existing dwelling units, too, are not easy to find. Real estate brokers do collect such information, but aggregate data on national level are more difficult to find. So, mapping such structures is important.

• Older dwelling units often are often bought by households with low-income levels. However, many a times these are renovated and remodeled and used by people with higher-income levels. There is no data collection system for such transactions in India. By maintaining a periodically updated balance sheet of the number of dwelling units, ordered according to prices and rents, the government could be able to measure the shortage of homes, too. This is important to evaluate the demand for homes from people or varying income levels, and for a greater understanding of the concept of affordability of homes.

• Existing homes often do not consume real estate efficiently because the imposed floor space index (FSI) restriction often hinder redevelopment of real estate in India. To calculate the FSI that is required to make redevelopment feasible for owners and tenants when they are redeveloped, it is important to map properties.

• In large Indian cities, a significant fraction of the population live in informal units. But collecting data on prices and rents of dwelling units in cities with large slums is difficult. This is true of collecting data on residential stock in the periphery, too, in the absence of a definite periphery. Mapping is important to handle such issues in a more empirical fashion.

• Even when these are renovated, existing dwelling units are likely to be cheaper than newly build homes of a same size.