CIDCO scraps 18,820-home Navade township project as sales slow and unsold flats pile up

The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) has decided to overhaul its housing policy in the face of slowing home sales and mounting wasteful expenditure. As part of the change, it has cancelled the large township project of 18,820 homes proposed at Navade for the upper and middle classes.

CIDCO had decided three years ago to build 18,820 homes in the Navade node. The homes were to be 2BHK units. But people are turning away from CIDCO homes, and the decision has now been taken to wind up the project.

For the past few years CIDCO has followed a policy of building homes on a large scale for different economic groups. Under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the target is about 97,000 homes in four phases, of which more than 25,000 have been completed. However, a wide gap has opened up between demand and the homes actually available. As a result, completed homes in several nodes are still unsold, and crores of rupees of CIDCO's investment is locked up.

Against this background, CIDCO has set aside its old policy of building homes in bulk without adequate thought. It is now moving towards a new policy of "housing according to demand". Homes built without studying actual market demand were adding to the financial burden, and CIDCO took the hard decision once this became clear. It is hoped that this will lead to better planning of housing projects in future and ease the financial pressure on CIDCO to some extent.

Several reasons have been cited for the poor response to CIDCO homes, and because of them people are not warming to its lotteries. The mega housing scheme named "Meri Pasand Ka CIDCO Ghar" also drew no response. People were disappointed by the very high prices of the homes released in the lotteries. As a result, many applied for the lottery but did not pay the earnest money. Seeing the very low response, CIDCO extended the lottery deadline several times, but that too had little effect.