MahaRERA recently released a list of 407 projects that lapsed in 2021 across Maharashtra. These include 388 residential and 19 commercial projects. The residential projects account for 20,955 housing units, of which 52 per cent (10,682 units) are already sold and 10,093 units remain unsold. The top five cities in the state with the maximum lapsed projects are MMR, Pune, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Satara, respectively. Santhosh Kumar, Vice Chairman, ANAROCK Group, has explained the reason behind the lapse of projects by saying, “The RERA registration numbers of these projects lapsed for several reasons. RERA was implemented in 2017, and a year later, the IL&FS crisis impacted the real estate, particularly the residential segment. NBFCs was a major funding source for the real estate industry with banks reluctant due to rising NPAs. NBFC funding slowed down significantly with the IL&FS crisis. Private equity funding into the sector also slowed down to a trickle as PE players became skittish and hyper-sensitive to market signals and began exercising immense caution before lending to developers. Grade B and C developers are the most impacted as lending to them became minimal, which in turn impacted the construction of various projects. Just as funding issues began to get resolved, the pandemic worsened the situation for medium to small players due to disruptions in demand and the supply of raw materials. In the last two years, buyers have been heavily favouring branded projects, while medium-to-small players took the biggest hit as their projects now accounting for most on the list of lapsed RERA registrations. Fortunately, Government-backed funds are now identifying projects that are nearing to completion, and providing last-mile funding, says Kumar.