How Centre’s ‘SWAMIH’ Investment Fund Is Reviving Completion Of Stalled Housing Projects In Indian Cities

The residential sector of the country continues to grapple with persistently delayed or completely stalled housing projects — primarily caused by issues such as payment failures, insufficient funds or flawed approvals on the developers' part.

Ultimately, homebuyers are the ones who face the challenge of paying EMIs and rents while also continue to struggle to get the home they were promised.

As these situations arise in various cities across India, the government has also intervened in its efforts to help troubled homebuyers by ensuring delivery of such projects soon.

Completion Of Stuck Housing Projects In Bengaluru

In Bengaluru, there has been a recent development where a long-delayed housing project has finally been completed. The project had been put on hold for nearly ten years due to financial constraints and other problems faced by the builder.

Bookings for this project were made in 2012, with an initial promise of delivery by 2016.

However, the construction came to a halt in 2018, leaving the middle-class homebuyers, who were paying both rent and home loan EMIs, in a difficult and uncertain situation.

The project — Mantri Serenity on Kanakapura Road, has now been successfully completed with the financial support of the “Special Window for Completion of Construction of Affordable and Mid-Income Housing Projects (SWAMIH)” Investment fund — a special scheme by the Union government to ensure completion of stalled housing projects. 

It is the first project from Bengaluru to receive this assistance as in October 2020, the project secured its funding support from the SWAMIH Investment Fund.

Within a span of two years, the project was successfully completed, and the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) began issuing Occupation Certificates (OC) from December 2022 onwards.

An update on the same was shared by Tejasvi Surya, Bengaluru South MP, who had urged for centre’s actions to ensure the completion of the project, where as many as 3,000 home buyers had invested and were stuck for several years.

As per earlier reports, Tejasvi Surya stated, "In the interest of more than 3,000 families, I had requested finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and officials of SBICAP ventures to sanction SWAMIH funds for the completion of the Mantri Serenity Project. The Mantri Serenity project has become the first from Bengaluru to receive assistance through the SWAMIH funds”.

What is SWAMIH Investment Fund

The SWAMIH Investment Fund, launched in November 2019, is a government-funded initiative aimed at completing distressed and brownfield properties that are registered under the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA).

It is managed by SBICAP Ventures Limited, which is part of the State Bank Group. The fund is sponsored by the ministry of finance.

The project identifies both established developers with a history of stalled projects, non-performing asset (NPA) accounts, and customer complaints, as well as first-time developers.  

Irfan A Kazi, Chief Investment Officer, SWAMIH Fund, SBICAP Ventures, said, that the mandate of the stressed asset fund is to provide the last mile of funding required to complete such projects to ensure delivery of homes to buyers, reports Money Control.

Under this initiative, approximately 130 projects, with a total of 20,557 homes, have received approval. The total cost of these projects has amounted to over Rs 12,000 crore thus far.

These projects are spread across more than 30 cities including Amravati, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Jaipur, Mohali, Nagpur, Nasik, besides Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), National Capital Region (NCR), Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai, among others.

The overarching objective of the initiative is to complete more than 81,000 homes within a three-year timeframe, focusing on tier-1 and tier-2 cities.

According to a government statement in March 2023, the fund has completed the construction of 26 projects and generate returns for its investors, reports Hindustan Times.

“The Fund has also played a critical role in the growth of many ancillary industries in real estate and infrastructure sector having successfully unlocked liquidity of more than Rs. 35,000 crore,” it said.