BENGALURU: Green shoots are visible in Bengaluru’s residential property market, after years of languid sales.
The number of new launches is up. It had dwindled after the implementation of
RERA in 2017, but it has sprung back into action. In the first half of the year,
builders launched 15,556 units in Bengaluru, 11% more compared to the same period last year and nearly double from the 8,384 units between July and December of 2017, as per data from independent property consultancy
Knight Frank. Sales rose 22% to 25,802 units.
The report said low-ticket prices of newer launches are encouraging buyers to dip their toes in the market. About 64% of the new launches was in the under Rs 50-lakh category, up from 37% a year ago.
The developers TOI spoke to said some life has returned to the market.
RERA helped developers regain trust of the buyers
Developer Brigade Enterprises said sales in June and July had been “quite good”. In June, the company launched a project in Whitefield, and started phase II of a project at Budigere Cross in Whitefield. It has sold 100 units in the former and 50 of the 370 units in the latter. “Customers, who were fence-sitters, waited probably for more time for a price correction but they have realised those days are gone. Prices being stable and the interest rate slowly hardening are indicators of the market picking up,” Viswa Prathap Desu, head of sales and marketing at Brigade Residential, said.
GM Infinite said while it sold 3,000 units in the past one-and-a-half years, it sold about 1,500 units in just the previous quarter. The company plans to launch three projects this year. “The interest rates are low, prices are under control, and we expect the second half of the year to be better than the first,” chairman and managing director Gulam Mustafa said.
Sobha’s new sales volume was 0.96 million sqft for the three months ended June 30, up from 0.81 million in the same period last year. It is set to launch another project in Bengaluru this month. Total Environment managing director Kamal Sagar said in the past 3-4 months, the company had started getting serious enquiries again. “We launched a project in June in the Rs 1-crore category and have had close to 1,000 enquiries and 27 sales. Some projects which were slow are seeing traction,” he said. Developer Sowparnika, which builds more affordable houses, said it sold 400 units in the April-June quarter, compared to 150 in the same period last year, when the market was reeling under the impact of demonetisation.
Shantanu Mazumder, senior branch director at Knight Frank Bengaluru, said after a year of enforcement of RERA in Karnataka, compliance processes have become streamlined at the developers’ end. “Such compliance and good end-user traction are encouraging developers to enter afresh in the market,” he said, adding RERA has helped builders regain buyers’ trust.
(Picture used for representational purpose)
