Initiation of Housing Micro Finance in Pakistan: A New Paradigm Shift in Housing Market

Abstract

Housing is the third most important necessity of a human being. Every human being needs a housing unit to live in. Recently, with globalization and urbanization, the demand for housing has increased manifold, whereas the supply has remained the same. Similarly, in Pakistan, the value of land and building in urban areas increased exponentially. The lowincome class could not afford a housing unit as they did not have the resources to buy or construct a housing unit at once. With new trends, the low-income people would buy a piece of land on the urban periphery and construct the housing unit in increments. The availability of funds was the key factor in this approach. With the availability of microfinance services in the market, the availability of funds has increased for the low-income groups. The research aims to study the difference between the working of different financing institutes and banks and to formulate recommendations based on the collected data.