Housing is really expensive in Mumbai, and most people cannot afford to buy a house, right?

However everybody aspires to buy a house – and this is also undeniable. So how do people go about dreaming about buying a house, and how do they buy a house. Or, do they?

What are the obstacles / impediments to buying a house ?

1. Most of them cannot make up what to buy: They have no clue whether they should buy a house for staying or as an investment. Which means they do not know whether to buy a house within a colony with a swimming pool, gym, etc. Now all this is important if you want to sell it off, but it does not matter if you are going to live there, and do not plan to use those services. Or if your parents are planning to live there and they are not planning to use those resources. Remember facilities cost money – and the charges WILL depend on the size of the house you buy, NOT how much you use it!

2. If you do not know what you want to do with it, you will NEVER be able to make up your mind about what and where to buy.

3. Most of them are not sure about their ability to pay the EMI if one of them loses the job for whatever reasons.

4. Not having adequate money to make a down payment. Of course when they like a property they do not mind taking a personal loan to make up for the shortfall.

5. While waiting for a big buy like a ‘house’ they run out of patience and buy a motorcycle, car, camera, foreign trip, etc. etc. draining the MEAGER deposit that they were building.

6. One of them lose their job, or the wife gets pregnant, …..and the second income disappears..

7. Not enough discipline to build up a decent corpus for making the down payment..

….more to come perhaps…..