Homeowners in India roll up sleeves to complete their unfinished flats

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Lalit Vazirani, a computer programmer from Mumbai, never reckoned on having to turn amateur property developer.

Yet here he is, a decade after putting down a deposit for an apartment near the city's airport, dealing with architects, taxes, various planning permissions and even court hearings. All because the developer behind the $50 million project has gone bust, and nobody else has stepped in to finish the work.

"We never in our wildest dreams imagined one day we would take on the functions and the role of a developer,” said Vazirani, 45, who bought the two-bedroom unit before construction started. “But fate had other plans.”

Few things illustrate the malaise in India’s property market as starkly as would-be homeowners having to dedicate untold hours to completing the flats they spent years saving up for. While no estimates exist for the number of people in Vazirani’s position, India’s property market is struggling to digest some $65 billion worth of projects in various stages of completion -- or, in many cases, non-completion.

It’s an issue with the potential to sap confidence among house buyers, further complicating developers’ attempts to claw their way out from under a mountain of debt.

Weakened Faith

So many delayed building projects have “severely weakened faith in any under-construction properties and reviving buyers’ trust is a Herculean task,” said Anuj Puri, the chairman of Anarock Property Consultants Pvt. “If buyers stop purchasing, builders will have a far more challenging time to get funds from external sources for construction.”

 Two years ago, India introduced a law with strict punishments for building delays...Read More