MHADA designates HDFC as most-favoured lender

The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) has designated HDFC as its most-favoured lender, under which the largest mortgage player will extend home loans to MHADA flat allottees at a lower processing fee based on the allotment letter.

For HDFC, this will give further fillip to its affordable housing loans, which already constitutes over 80 per cent of its over eight million customers as its average loan size is only Rs 27 lakh.

MHADA, the Maharashtra government arm that is into developing affordable housing, on Thursday signed an agreement with HDFC towards this, the mortgage lender said. The arrangement was initiated by the state's Housing Minister Jitendra Awhad, it added.

The Authority during its seven decades of existence has provided homes to nearly 7.50 lakh families across the state, of which 2.5 lakh are in Mumbai.

But, due to lack of housing stock in the past two years, it was unable to conduct the lottery draws as a result only a few hundred houses were offered in 2018 and 2019 despite receiving lakhs of applications.

HDFC Managing Director Renu Sud Karnad said that under this special arrangement, the lender will charge only a flat Rs 2,500 per applicant as processing fee. However, this does not mean allottees have to take loan only from HDFC, she said adding that doing so will make it easier for the homebuyer to benefit from easy and faster processing.