A chartered accountant has unpacked a housing nightmare for Indian middle-class citizens, underlining how your dream home could now be the centre of a horror story. In a LinkedIn post titled “Buying your own
home is no longer a dream — it’s a nightmare”, CA Meenal Goel claimed over 4.3 lakh homebuyers have been caught in a scam, having to pay expensive EMIs for homes that were never built.
Disappearing builders, banks that wouldn’t want to associate with the case and the Indian government’s insufficient and delayed action are creating victims among homebuyers in a broken system that needs immediate attention, insists the chartered accountant.
According to Goel, the “No EMI till possession” is a seductive lie. Under this scheme, the buyer is supposed to pay just 10 per cent upfront, while the bank disburses 80 per cent of the loan and the builder promises to handle EMIs for two to three years. However, that is a trap. If the builder defaults on regular EMIs even once, the entire financial burden falls on the buyer, who was lured by the only 10 per cent upfront payment.
“My friend pays Rs 45,000 in rent and Rs 32,000 in EMI every month — for a house she may never get,” Goel wrote in a post that immediately struck a chord with Indian middle-class homebuyers, reacting to a concern first raised over Reddit.
According to the industry data noted by Goel, there are 5.08 lakh stalled housing units across 42 Indian cities right now, which is a 9 per cent increase since 2018. Mumbai, Noida, Gurugram, Thane and Greater Noida are some of the epicentres of the scam. In these tier-1 cities alone, 1,636 projects, covering over 4.3 lakh homes, haven’t yet been completed.
“Families are paying both rent + EMIs for homes they may never get. Some booked when their kids were in school; today those kids are in college, and the house is still a construction site,” wrote Goel.
“The loan is in your name, not the builder’s. If they default, the bank still comes after you. Even if the house never gets delivered. Miss an EMI? Your credit score takes the hit.”
“This isn’t just a real estate crisis. It’s a systemic failure of project financing and regulatory oversight. Subvention schemes like ‘No EMI till possession’ need urgent reform.”
For most buyers, there is no compensation, no legal relief and no regulator providing them relief. While the government of India’s SWAMIH Fund has delivered 50,000 units, with an ambitious 40,000 more targeted for completion in 2025, Goel highlighted that is still less than 20 per cent of the total backlog.
