When a Lifetime Isn’t Enough: Why Mumbai’s Housing Crisis Needs Radical Re-thinks

I read the headline — “Even top 5% can't buy a home in Mumbai: Study suggests over 100 years of saving still not enough for a 1,000 sqft house” — and felt two things at once: anger, and déjà vu. Anger at an economy where continuing life’s most basic aspiration — owning a roof with decent room to breathe — is statistically out of reach even for the wealthy relative to the city’s own income scales. Déjà vu because this is a conversation I started years ago, and parts of the solution I sketched then feel as relevant today as they did then.

The study’s blunt arithmetic — that median incomes, even at the top of the distribution, fall far short of asking prices — forces us to look beyond market bluster. This isn’t merely a “pricing” problem; it’s an architectural, regulatory, fiscal and moral one. The city’s supply constraint, land scarcity, speculative land values, opaque approvals, and the basic mismatch between what is built and what people can reasonably afford conspire to make home ownership a generational mirage.

Why the math fails for most buyers

Several structural reasons explain the gap:

• Land scarcity and speculative premiums in a finite city push prices up faster than incomes.
• Regulatory complexity and long approval chains inflate costs and reward large-capital players. I wrote about reducing approvals for small retail and hospitality ventures precisely because bureaucratic friction pushes up setup costs and discourages modular innovation Government to slash approvals needed to open kirana stores, eateries.
• Infrastructure projects that misfire (or go over-budget) shift public resources away from affordable housing and distort urban economics — recall the painful lesson of Metro 1 and stranded investments Metro in Ditch.
• Financing, developer margins, and the need to service massive upfront project costs mean apartments are priced to markets that tolerate high ticket prices, not to the incomes of ordinary Mumbaikars.

These are not new observations. What is new — increasingly — is how stark the outcomes are.

What we must stop doing

• Accepting the idea that the market will ‘trickle down’ affordability. It hasn’t.
• Treating urban land as a pure speculative asset.
• Building housing as bespoke, high-margin projects rather than exploring mass-manufactured, cheaper alternatives.

What we should start doing — practical, scalable ideas

1. Build differently: mass-manufactured, low-cost housing is not a fairy tale. Years ago I argued that prefab and 3D printing could change the economics of homes — a compact 323 sq ft dwelling need not cost Rs 100 lakh if we rethink construction technology and scale (see my note on 3D-printed housing) Future home is here. If we can industrialize building the way we have industrialized manufacturing, per-unit costs fall dramatically.

2. Free up supply by reforming approvals and unlocking small-scale developers and kirana-scale entrepreneurs. Simplifying and standardizing approvals — the very reforms I flagged for kirana and eateries — can be replicated for housing to lower capex and operating costs Government to slash approvals needed to open kirana stores, eateries.

3. Redeploy public land and surplus infrastructure for modular affordable housing. Public land, if priced below market for affordable projects, can make the numbers work. Avoid the mistake of using scarce public land for prestige projects that exacerbate inequality.

4. Incentivize rental over ownership for the near term. A livable, secure rental market keeps people closer to jobs and reduces pressure on purchase demand while we scale supply-side solutions.

5. Encourage micro‑unit developments with shared facilities (co‑living done with dignity), and fast-track such projects in transit-oriented nodes.

6. Tax and policy nudges against land hoarding and vacant flats: punitive vacancy taxes or higher holding costs would push idle supply into the market.

7. Pilot, measure, repeat. Use quick, city-level pilots (with strong monitoring) to test 3D-printed clusters, prefab neighborhoods, and subsidized rental towers. If an idea scales, expand it; if it fails, learn fast.

Why my old notes still matter — and feel validated

This is the part I promised to emphasise: years ago I suggested many of these directions — from modular construction to easing approvals and rethinking supply chains. Seeing today’s headlines is a validation that some of those ideas weren’t merely speculative musing. They were practical proposals grounded in how cities actually work. I had written about 3D printing as a tool for affordable homes Future home is here and argued for reforms that let small operators innovate Government to slash approvals needed to open kirana stores, eateries. Today, the urgency is greater; the logic remains.

If there’s a single takeaway, it’s this: housing affordability in Mumbai is not a single‑policy problem. It’s a systems problem — and systems require systems thinking. Fixing one lever (subsidies, say) while ignoring the rest will always be partial. We need industrial thinking (how do we make housing cheaper at scale?), regulatory reform (how do we remove unnecessary cost inflators?), and a political will to reallocate land and capital toward shelter, not speculation.

A note on urban livelihoods and the informal city

Our urban economy is more than towers and developers. Street vendors, micro‑shops and the dense retail fabric sustain millions — I argued for organizing and licensing them, not to regulate them out of existence but to weave them into an inclusive urban economy Street Vendors: How to Organize. Any housing solution must be compatible with livelihoods; that’s how cities retain their opportunity fabric.

Closing thought

When studies say a century of saving won’t buy a 1,000 sqft home in Mumbai, it’s an indictment of collective failure. But it’s also a call to action. We already have threads of solutions — industrial construction, streamlined approvals, better land policy, and inclusive city planning. They need to be sewn together urgently.

The problems are complex, yes. But the first step is accept them clearly, then marshal technology, policy and civic imagination with the seriousness they deserve.

References and further reading

• On the impossibility of building a new restaurant in metros and the cost of urban real estate: How Much Does It Cost to Open a Restaurant in Metro Cities?
• Newspaper round-up and data pointers that prompted the study headline: WSJ — Today's Paper
• On investor behaviour, savings and household choices: Investing dilemma: 17% return in 2 years good enough?
• My earlier thoughts on easing approvals and letting small enterprises experiment: Government to slash approvals needed to open kirana stores, eateries
• On industrialized construction and the potential for 3D printing to change affordability math: Future home is here
• On organizing the informal economy and protecting livelihoods while modernizing cities: Street Vendors: How to Organize

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh