Credit rating agency, ICRA in its latest research update on Housing Finance Companies has said that the housing credit growth is likely to rise 17-19 percent in the financial year 2019. It stated that primary home purchases, especially in the affordable housing segment may rise due to growing affordability for the first time home buyer supported by government’s incentives such as the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). It noted that with steady housing credit growth of 16 percent in FY18, the mortgage penetration (housing credit as a percentage of GDP) touched the double-digit mark of 10 percent for the first time in FY18, up from 9.5 percent in FY17.
The rating agency expects mortgage penetration levels to go up by another 300-500 bps over the next five years. Besides, it said that overall asset quality indicators for all housing finance firms (HFCs) remained stable with Gross NPAs of 1.1 percent for FY18, better than the 1.2 percent in December 2017 but worse than the 0.8 percent NPAs in FY17. Further, it expects overall gross NPAs for HFCs to remain range-bound between 1.2 to 1.5 percent this year. It added that the retail home loan asset quality of HFCs is likely to be benefited by the recent Cabinet decision to treat home buyers as financial creditors.
However, the report said that gross NPAs in the sub-segment deteriorated from 3.3 percent in FY17 to 4.1 percent in FY18, driven by greater portfolio seasoning, entity-specific factors in some cases and external events such as note-ban and GST rollout, which have impacted cash flows of borrowers. On the funding side, it said that HFCs would need to tie-up for Rs 4 trillion of incremental funds to meet the growth plans as well as replacing the maturing liabilities in FY19.
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