These days, owning a house has become a distant reality especially for low income and middle income families. To provide this part of the society a shelter where in they can live comfortably, it has become a necessity to adopt cost effective, innovative and environmental friendly housing technology. Low Cost Housing is being promoted by Building Centres (Nirmithi Kendras) Established by the Govt. & HUDCO in all the districts. They are providing their Technical Advice and Guidance services to the general public to enable them to construct houses at an economical cost or affordable cost.

Not only this, a number of real estate developers all over India are foraying into low-budget housing targeting low-budget and middle-income segment. Basic reason to foray into this segment of housing is the slowdown in realty, which has made it difficult for developers to sell premium and luxury houses. By investing into this segment, they are not only targeting a market that needs a shelter of their own to live-in but are also able to generate sales during the slowdown. If we look at current scenario residential property and commercial property have become unaffordable for low-budget and middle-income segment

What is Low Cost Housing?

Cost Effective Housing is a new concept that has more to do with budgeting. This concept seeks to reduce the cost of construction through better management, effective use of local materials, skills and technology without sacrificing the performance and life of the structure. It should be noted that low cost housing does not mean houses constructed by utilizing cheap building materials of poor quality. These houses are built and designed as any other form of house with regard to foundation, structure, strength etc. The developers are available to achieve reduction in cost through effective utilization of locally available building materials and techniques that are durable, economical, accepted by users and do not require costly maintenance. Low-cost is also achieved by deferring finishing and implementing it in phases. Besides that, low-cost housing aims at increasing the efficiency of workers, minimizing wastage in design and space and applying good management practices, so that shelter can be provided at prices which is affordable to people.

What is its Building Cost?

One can divide the building construction into two parts namely:

• Building material cost which is 65 to 70 %

• Labour cost which is 65 to 70 %

The scope for effective means of reducing construction costs of low-cost houses lies with curtailing the quantity of building materials, which consumes less energy. It is possible if one follows a practical and rational design procedure of the efficient use of materials. A reduced cost of construction is achieved by selecting a more efficient material or by an improved design.

What are the avenues for reducing cost of construction – concept?

Given below are the avenues that exist for reducing building construction cost:

• To construct a low-budge house, one must reduce podium area by using thinner wall concept. Eg, 15 cms thick solid concrete block wall.

• Use of locally available material in an innovative form like soil cement blocks in place of burnt brick can help you reducing the construction costs.

• Other thing that can help you reduce the cost is the use energy efficiency materials that consume less energy. For instance, use of concrete block in place of burnt brick.

• Use of substitute materials can be of great use. For instance, one should use environmentally friendly materials that are substitute for usual building components like use R.C.C. Door and window frames in place of wooden frames.

• A practical and rational approach can be of great help in reducing construction costs. One should try and preplan every component of a house and rationalize the design procedure.

• By preplanning each and every component of a house, one can minimize the wastage of materials due to demolition of the unplanned component of the house.

• To build a low cost house, each component of the house shall be thoroughly checked to know if it's necessary or not necessary. If a component is necessary, it should not be used

• Reduction in cost is also possible by eliminating unnecessary components. For instance, one should avoid plastering the walls, eliminating the use of plinth slabs in the foundation.

• It is important to accept lower quality finishes like exposed brick work without plastering to live and build a low-cost house.

In the end, it is necessary that good planning and design methods shall be taken up by utilizing the services of an experienced engineer or a proficient architect, thereby achieving overall cost reduction to the extent of 25% in actual practice.