As a sector, housing finance is among the most important for the economy. The reason: When a house is built, the impact is felt across the board. Makers of cement, brick and tiles, steel, pipes and sanitaryware, electrical wires and fixtures, as well as the unorganized workers who build the house. Everyone is impacted. But for housing finance companies, there is a major challenge: The base asset, real estate, is most non-transparent in terms of pricing, and also prone to scams. That is why we seek regulatory changes to keep the sector on track and avoid the kind of overheating that led to the crisis of 2018. In the six years since the housing finance companies witnessed major scams, there has been a regulatory clean-up and tightening of the whole sector. So, time to look at them again?
