The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) quarterly residential asset price monitoring survey (RAPMS) results showed that the country's housing affordability scene in cities has worsened in the last four years.

The central bank has been conducting this quarterly survey since July 2010 on housing loans disbursed by select banks/ housing finance companies across 13 Indian cities. It includes Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bhopal and Bhubaneswar. The survey measures affordability of the houses as against invidual income, credit risk on housing loans and loan eligibility.

The highlights of the latest RAPMS released on Thursday were:

• Median LTV (loan-to-value) ratio, which a measure of calculation credit risk on housing loans, had moved from 67.7 percent to 69.6 percent between March 2015 and March 2019 indicating that banks have become increasingly risk tolerant.
• Median EMI-to-Income (ETI) ratio, that measure loan eligibility, remained steady during the last 2 years. Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad recorded higher median ETI compared to other cities.
• Housing affordability worsened over the past 4 years as the house price to income (HPTI) ratio increased from 56.1 in March 2015 to 61.5 in March 2019.
• Mumbai remains the least affordable city in India, while Bhubaneswar is the most affordable city.

RBI's calculations on median house price-to-monthly income ratio in the 13 cities, ranked the affordability of the cities in the following manner (most expensive to least expensive).

1. Mumbai
2. Ahmedabad
3. Pune
4. Chandigarh
5. Hyderabad
6. Chennai and Lucknow
7. Delhi
8. Kolkata
9. Bhopal
10. Bengaluru
11. Jaipur
12. Bhubaneswar