Housing for all is not just the wish of upper and middle-class India, but the low-income segments as well. While developers and experts talk of interest rate cuts and lower prices, they forget that millions daily-wage workers are not eligible to get a bank loan to buy a home. Take the case of Dhanashree and Jyoti, two women who have been yearning to buy homes of their own but have had their home loan applications rejected by banks time and again. Despite having regular incomes – Dhanashree runs a tiffin service from her home while Jyoti works as a domestic help – neither have been able to gather the required documents or show enough of a credit history to satisfy mainstream banks.

That’s when Dhanashree and Jyoti applied the Mahila Awas Loan from Aspire Home Finance limited (AHFL). Nicknamed MALA, this scheme provides home loans to women in the unorganized sector. “‘My budget was Rs 10 lakh and getting a loan was very difficult. I approached at least 3 banks and they turned me down” said Dhanashree. “My daughter looked up MALA online and we approached them and filed for a home loan under their scheme”, Jyoti added.

The MALA scheme is exclusively for low-income earning women and under this scheme, women homebuyers can take home loans of between Rs 2 lakh to Rs 12 lakh at a rate of 10-12.5% interest. While that may be higher than those offered by mainstream institutions, you must remember that they do not have to show as many documents or proofs to get these loans. “All they need to carry is a conventional note sheet where they put in their daily transactions and we take copies of that. This document show how much they spend on children’s education, daily expenses etc. and this way we can assess how much they earn”, says Anil Sachidanand, MD of AHFCL.

AHFCL has also tied up with developers in the extended suburbs of Mumbai, including areas like Virar, Kalyan, and Panvel to give additional benefits to women homebuyers. These benefits include discounts of up to Rs 100 per sq. feet in every flat. With are an estimated 11-lakh women in Mumbai belonging to the low-income category and earn anywhere between Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per month. A sizeable number that many financial institutions are targeting with home-loan schemes designed for the low-income group. Axis Bank’s Asha scheme for instance gives loans of up to Rs 28 lakh at an interest rate of 10.45% to women home buyers looking to invest in low-cost homes while DHFL is offering loans up to Rs 9 lakh at 9.9% interest.

Several home finance companies are also tying up with developers in the extended suburbs of Mumbai, including areas like Virar, Kalyan, and Panvel realty markets to give additional benefits to women homebuyers. A tactic that experts say is especially useful for low-income home buyers who may not be aware of which projects to invest in. “A lot of times the customers are looking for guidance as they might not be fully aware about who to buy properties from, or for that matter what are the cheques that need to be submitted and documents one needs to go through. While working with the builders you can actually fast track the approval of the land document process so that when a property is reapproved by a builder, the process works at a significantly faster pace”, says Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar.com.

Getting your home loan approved is no easy task, especially for those in the unorganized sector. But with more banks and financial institutions coming up with schemes to help this segment, there is growing hope that this will change and with it, the journey towards housing for all seems to be coming that much closer.

Ankita Sinha, Reporter, NDTV