new delhi onethird of the housing projects in mumbai and bangalore and over twothird in national capital region will be unable to complete work on time mainly due to a severe fund squeeze according to a survey released on friday in all nearly 45 of the 1920 projects launched in the three metros suffered due to scarcity of skilled workers and the slothful attitude of the developers a report by real estate research propequity revealed the study covered projects which were launched between january 2007 and june 2009 and were expected to be delivered by january 2012 while thousands of investors who have booked apartments in these projects continue to pay their loan installments developers in ncr reported the worst ontime performance completing just 23 of the projects they had taken up in mumbai developers had completed 61 of the projects and the number of ready projects was 66 in bangalore ncr has contributed to lot of the delay and the major reason is that the number of projects that were launched here were very large compared to mumbai and bangalore said propequity ceo samir jasuja developers however said there are several other factors ranging from getting approvals to the mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme and infrastructure projects which were competing for workers lalit kumar jain who heads confederation of real estate developers association of india credai the industry lobby group said the reserve bank of indias decision to discourage banks and finance companies to lend to real estate companies had dried up domestic funding at the same time developments in europe have affected the availability of fund through the private equity window with the high interest rates and economic slowdown several buyers too have postponed purchase decisions resulting in not just lower demand but subdued cash flow therefore in any case developers are forced to complete a project even if it is partially sold but the fund crunch affects the speed of construction he said the delay in ncr is visible across noida and gurgaon the two most active hubs where several apartment owners are awaiting possession they complain that the contracts weigh in favour of developers as the delay in delivery only gets them a few thousand rupees as compensation in contrast to twodigit penalty rates levied by realtors for instance for a 2000 square feet apartment that costs around rs 1 crore a buyer pays around rs 1 lakh in equated monthly installments emi while any delay fetches a compensation of rs 20000 a month typically developers pay rs 510 per sq ft as penalty within ncr affordable housing faced the major brunt of delays as 92 of all projects were delayed followed by 76 in the midend housing segment and 72 for luxury projects the picture will look a little skewed as the court order has delayed construction of affordable apartments in noida extension