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Affordable Housing: Where Success Favours the Brave
Affordable and mid-income housing is a beast like no other. It has a business model that bears little similarity to traditional real estate where developers often rely on price appreciation. Here, the margins are a lot lower, and builders must construct township-like projects quickly. A delay can wipe out profits, while buyers don’t have the ability to pay EMIs if projects are held up. Despite these challenges, three companies—Ashiana Housing, Poddar Developers and Value Budget Housing Corporation (VBHC)—have decided to focus on this segment.
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- Uncategorized
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‘My Home, Your Business’: A New Evaluation Tool Based on Nearly 100 Cases, 25 Interviews With Firms, Experts in Affordable Housing
Ghost towns built by well-meaning developers and governments can be found in many corners of the world. But these failed projects only tell part of the story. Innovative companies and partners are learning from the past and building houses people want to live in and business models that make investors listen, according to "My Home, Your Business – A Guide to Affordable Housing Solutions for Low-Income Communities.”
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- Impact Assessment
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Better Loans for Better Housing: How Housing Microfinance and Strategic Value Chains Can Help Alleviate the Low-Income Housing Deficit
The majority of the world’s population lives in cities, and much of our future population growth is projected to occur in cities in the developing world. But in spite of the demand, the BoP housing market has been largely handicapped by informality and undeveloped channels for financing and technical assistance. Gary Carrier explores a number of market-based solutions.
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- Finance
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- housing, lending, microfinance
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NexThought Monday – The Affordable Housing Puzzle: Three pilot projects in India aim to assemble the pieces –customers, financing and scale
Can the low-cost or affordable housing segment business in fact be profitable, and more importantly, scalable? asks housing developer and researcher Dhaval Monani. He points to new pilot projects that show promise in delivering safe, very low-cost homes that come with a profit for developers.
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Something New in BoP Housing: A new OMJ study explores four key business models tailored to low-income consumers
In a study just published by the Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ) at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), researcher Christy Stickney highlights several promising approaches to penetrating the BoP housing markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, based on 11 cases from Colombia, México, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru.
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- Uncategorized
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April’s Most Popular Posts: Better housing loans, a letter to Google and impact investing growing pains
One of the most satisfying things about working here at NextBillion is getting to publish articles from first-time writers. It’s especially satisfying to see those rookie contributors shoot to the top of the most viewed list for the month. That was the case in April.
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- Investing
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- housing, impact investing
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NexThought Monday – China’s Social Enterprise Movement Set to Blast Off: The country is urging a bigger role for social enterprise in society and the economy
China is urging a bigger role for social enterprise in society and the economy. In response, socially-minded businesses are taking off. Given China’s energy and strong entrepreneurial spirit, as the social enterprise movement grows and flourishes, the world’s second largest economy could soon be poised to make a significant global impact.
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- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Habitat for Humanity launches housing micro-credit in Costa Rica
Poor would-be homeowners will have the chance to remodel or build their own homes in a housing market that skews toward the rich.
- Categories
- Finance
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- housing, human rights, microfinance