For many Goans, the struggle for a home does not end with finding a place to live. Some lack clear ownership documents for houses they have occupied for years. Others own flats but face hurdles in securing conveyance. And for families looking to buy a home, property prices can remain beyond reach. Goa’s Mhaje Ghar and Mhajo Flat initiatives introduced recently by the state government address significant parts of this problem.
A home is often a family’s most valuable asset.
Yet, in Goa, living in a house for decades does not necessarily mean having clear legal ownership of it. Similarly, buying a flat does not always bring the process of transferring the underlying property into the owner’s name to a satisfactory conclusion. For prospective buyers, meanwhile, the challenge can begin much earlier, with the price of a home itself.
The Goa government’s Mhaje Ghar and Mhajo Flat initiatives seek to address different aspects of this problem. For CREDAI Goa, the state chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India, they represent important steps towards resolving longstanding ownership issues, although implementation and clarity on certain aspects remain important.
“The biggest plus is that people who have lived there forever without documents now have ownership. They can take bank loans and pass the property on to their heirs. Earlier, none of them had clear papers,” said CREDAI Goa president Rajesh Shet, explaining the significance of Mhaje Ghar.
Clear papers give families security with banks, transfers and inheritance; Mhaje Ghar offers eligible residents formal recognition of housing rights, subject to conditions. Meanwhile, Mhajo Flat addresses conveyance, the transfer of legal title to flat owners or their association, which stays incomplete in some buildings where builders or landowners are unavailable.
“They sell the flats but don’t complete the formalities that follow, such as the sale deed and conveyance,” notes Shailendra Kanekar, secretary of Milroc Kadamba in Old Goa, whose own housing society has faced the same hurdle. “There are around 2,200 societies in Goa, and many of them face the same problem of not getting proper ownership of their flats,” Kanekar further said.
The Mhajo Flat scheme provides a mechanism for eligible cooperative housing societies to obtain deemed conveyance of the land and building where the builder or landowner has failed to execute the required deed. This can give societies a legal basis for managing common property and pursuing redevelopment.
“With the Mhajo Flat scheme, if the builder, the landowner or both are missing and conveyance can’t happen, the government can convey the flat at a pre-decided, nominal fee. It’s like a deemed conveyance,” Shet said. “Conveying the land at today’s land values is impossible, and flat owners can’t pay today’s rates,” he added.
Prabhudesai, a resident of a two-decade-old Margao based housing society welcomes the Mhajo Flat scheme but seeked clarity on who applies, who pays stamp duty and who gets the shared land, and says awareness is low. “For the last 20 to 30 years, most builders have formed a society for the buildings but done nothing further for it. People have heard of the scheme but don’t know exactly what it is or what its benefits are.”
Avez Shaikh, secretary of CREDAI Goa, points to the wider need to make housing ownership more accessible, including by addressing the difficulties faced by developers in delivering homes at affordable prices. “The largest demand is in the affordable housing segment, but developers are moving away from it because margins are razor-thin and the process of delivering a home at a particular price point is cumbersome,” he said.
The question of ownership, however, is only one part of Goa’s housing challenge. Even when legal hurdles are removed, buying a home remains difficult for households whose incomes do not match prevailing property prices.
Shet also cautioned against defining affordable housing without reliable income data. “But again, it depends on what you define as affordable, because we lack data on the median salary. We need more data to categorize homes as affordable or not.”
The proposed transfer of land in Parcem, Pernem, to the Goa Housing Board provides an opportunity to examine how public land could contribute to housing for people who might otherwise struggle to enter the property market.
Shaikh argues that the definition of affordable housing itself needs reconsideration. “The current price cap of Rs 45 lakh is no longer practical. A home that cost Rs 45 lakh in 2019 costs around Rs 80 lakh today. We need to look at the size of the dwelling rather than a rigid price cap, alongside incentives for developers and buyers and more land designated for affordable housing,” he said. This is CREDAI’s proposed change to the existing policy framework, which uses both dwelling-size criteria and a price cap; it is not the current government definition.
The larger test for Goa is whether better ownership mechanisms and new housing initiatives can deliver lasting security to existing residents while opening a realistic path to home ownership for the next generation.
