Table II Comparative position of housing sector credit by commercial banks and HFCs  Table III Outstanding housing loans of HFCs2  The housing loan portfolio of any financial institution is a product of two variables – number of accounts and loan outstanding per borrower.
It has been observed that there has been a noticeable slowdown in the growth of the portfolio (Tables IV & V). One plausible reason is that post-crisis, banks have realised that while the demand for housing loans is tremendous, there is no substitute for prudent lending policies. This probably explains the slowdown in the growth rate of number of accounts.