Exploring Causes of Housing Vacancy: Evidence from New Town, Kolkata

Affordable housing provision is a major goal of the Government of India, which has implemented several programs to address the demand and supply side issues. However, existing imbalances in the housing market have rendered the housing policies and programs ineffectual in providing poor families with access to quality housing. The majority of households in metropolitan areas face extreme difficulty in acquiring shelter due to these imbalances in the housing market, despite targeted subsidies and public housing availability. Spatial variation in housing affordability across urban areas is often ignored, which exacerbates the supply–demand imbalance in the housing market. This imbalance is emphasized by the dichotomy between the housing shortage and housing vacancy in Indian urban areas. Therefore, examining the inherent causes of this imbalance in the housing market is imperative to identify methods for the provision of affordable housing. This study aims to undertake a large-scale primary survey to uncover location-specific housing market intricacies, which include the housing developers’ and buyers’ perspectives. This will be achieved by examining three key indicators: (1) house price; (2) housing affordability; and (3) housing vacancy. The primary data analysis reveals that the existing housing supply remains financially and spatially inaccessible for prospective buyers and renters in the study area. Therefore, this situation has led to a persistent issue that is characterized by prolonged periods of housing vacancy. The housing vacancy rate in New Town, Kolkata, India, which stands at 19.13%, surpasses the national average of 7.46%. This disparity in vacancy rates might have implications for the depletion of land and building resources, as well as significant social consequences, such as exacerbating housing affordability issues for low-to-middle-income (LMIG) households in the study area and the creation of gated communities with an increased likelihood of rising crime rates.