Pakistan is experiencing an unprecedented housing shortage and the backlog is ever increasing due to incremental supply falling short of incremental demand. At the same time demand/Finance Side of housing has not picked up over the years. Pakistan has established only one specialized housing finance company (SHFC) over the last 70 years, namely House Building Finance Company Limited (HBFC), established in 1952 which is not sufficient to properly respond to huge target market and peoples’ housing needs. On the other hand, the commercial banks (both conventional and Islamic) have also not been able to fill this gap and could not play any visible role in housing finance, with the exception of Islamic Banks. Further, banks are mostly active in entertaining housing needs of upper echelon of the society, who have little or no affordability issues 

According to the 2017 census Pakistan’s population was at 207.7 million, growing by 2.4 per cent per year, now standing at 222 million plus by end of 2020. The urban population, on the other hand, has grown by 2.7 per cent per year during the same period and is now estimated at 75.5 million. This does not include the urban population increase due to massive rural‐urban migration, also termed as urbanization or urban congestion. In major metropolitans like Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta it is estimated at around 3‐ 4%. That means urban population of major metropolitans is increasing at the rate of around 6% pa, leading to massive urban congestion and development of slums.