India’s housing shortage has evolved from a long-term challenge into an urgent affordable housing shortage. Earlier estimates (2012–2017) placed the shortage at 18–19 million homes, but by 2025, the problem had become more concentrated and severe in urban affordable housing.
It is estimated that there is a deficit of 9.4 to 10 million in affordable housing in India’s urban spaces. What is even more alarming is that this deficiency is on a rising trend, and if the ongoing trend of construction and delivery continues, then India may witness a deficiency of 30 million homes in 2030, making 2026 even more critical.
What’s Driving the Shortage in 2025
The crisis is not due to a lack of demand, but a collapse in affordable housing supply:
- Affordable housing supply met only 36% of demand in early 2025
- Homes priced under INR 5 million accounted for just 17% of new launches, down from 52% in 2018
- Developers are increasingly focusing on premium and luxury projects due to rising land costs, higher margins, and execution challenges
Therefore, first-time buyers, as well as middle-class families, are being priced out of homeownership, thus leading more people into the rental market with an increased cost of rent in the city.
2026 Outlook: The Gap Will Widen
As we look forward to 2026, affordability trends in the housing sector forecast that:
- The average prices of homes are forecasted to increase by 7%
- Urbanization is proceeding at a very rapid rate
- The availability of low-cost housing stock hasn’t increased
Unless there is a structural overhaul in the way houses are constructed, India will find it difficult to provide for the nation’s housing requirements in the future.
Why Conventional Building Is Inadequate-H4
Conventional construction techniques are slow and labor-intensive and lack scalability. For major affordable housing schemes, this leads to:
- Long construction time-frames
- Cost Overruns
- Variations in quality
- Delayed project delivery
These constraints and requirements make it impossible to efficiently produce millions of housing units through traditional construction.
Precast: The Only Scalable Housing Solution
In this regard, precast construction in India is highly required. By pre-manufacturing precast concrete such as hollow core slabs and walls in factories, projects can be executed faster and in cleaner environments.
Precast enables:
- 30–40% faster project completion
- Less labor dependency
- Improved Cost Predictability
- Scaling up to ensure uniform quality
Urbanaac’s Participation in Narrowing the Housing Gap. As a prominent precast construction company in India – Gujarat, Urbanaac is enabling massive residential and affordable housing projects with sustainable precast concrete solutions that are designed for scalability.
In light of their specializations as one of the foremost precast manufacturing companies in India, Urbanaac brings efficient precast solutions to smart cities across the Indian landscape to effectively assist real estate developers as well as the Indian government in efficiently and responsibly dealing with the housing problem in the country.
Constructing Homes at a Rate India Demands. The problem of housing in India has evolved beyond being a policy problem, and now it is a problem involving constructions. An efficient solution for reducing the increasing deficit in the country’s housing requirement can only be precast concrete, as it has the ability to construct homes on an enormous scale in India, which the country requires.
