City sees rise in home sales: Report

BENGALURU: The city's housing sector has outperfomed all other cities in the country in terms of sales of ready housing units in the past year, a new report by property consultants ANAROCK has shown. According to the report, housing sales rose by 32% in the past 12 months with maximum new supply of houses in the `40 to `80 lakh range.

Tired of the traffic woes of Bengaluru, more house buyers are opting to go for options which provide them the freedom to walk-to-work from their houses. “The walk to work concept has managed to get a stronger foothold in the city thanks to the continued availability of fairly large contiguous land parcels within municipal limits. Home buyers prefer mixed-use townships which incorporate commercial, residential, retail, entertainment and healthcare elements,” the company said in a statement.

Anuj Puri, Chairman of ANAROCK attributed the strong sales to an increase in commercial activity and the city's startup culture besides realistic prices. “The strong IT/ITeS economic dynamo continues to power most of the city’s residential demand and supply, and housing sales have remained healthy despite all macroeconomic headwinds. In fact, Bengaluru’s housing sales increased by 26% in Q3 2018 over the same period last year, the highest amongst all cities. Overall unsold stock declined by 32% and stood at 76,550 units in Q3 2018 in contrast to 1,12,995 units in Q3 2015,” he said.

Mid-segment housing dominates supply spectrum
East and South Bengaluru have the bulk of projects that promote the walk-to-work concept
Bengaluru added 1,58,820 new residential units between 2015 and Q3 2018
2018 added 23,270 new units in first three quarters
Mid-segment  (`40 - 80 lakh budget range) housing dominates city’s supply spectrum
Share of affordable housing has risen dramatically in the last 2 years, increasing from 16% in 2016 to 25% in 2018