Recently, the central government approved a Rs 25,000 crore fund to help complete over 1,500 stalled housing projects including ones that have been declared NPAs or admitted for insolvency proceedings.

Real estate developers are currently facing a huge cash crunch, but the situation is likely to improve with the government announcing a Rs 25,000-crore fund to complete stalled housing projects, JLL India CEO and Country Head Ramesh Nair said on Wednesday. The government should ensure that this fund is disbursed to the identified stalled housing projects quickly and in a transparent manner, he added.

“There is absolutely no liquidity in the real estate market. Developers are not getting funds from the non-banking financial companies (NBFCs),” Nair said, while speaking on the sidelines of a hackathon event to select three proptech (property tech) startups. He said the NBFCs, which have been the major source of funding for real estate developers from last many years are facing liquidity crunch post IL&FS default. However, Nair said the situation is likely to improve with setting up of this alternate investment fund (AIF) with a corpus of Rs 25,000 crore.

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“This Rs 25,000 crore fund will ease the liquidity situation. But one has to see how fast and how transparent it can be done,” he added. Recently, the central government approved a Rs 25,000 crore fund to help complete over 1,500 stalled housing projects including ones that have been declared NPAs or admitted for insolvency proceedings.

The move is likely to help 4.58 lakh housing units across the country. Only RERA-registered projects with positive net-worth will be provided funds. On hackathon, he said JLL India has partnered with Invest India to launch an accelerator programme for supporting those startups which are working on developing technology solutions for the real estate sector. “We got 2,000 registrations from startups, of which we selected around 700 startups in the first stage and then 60 startups,” he said. Nair said three startups will be selected finally by jury members.