Housing sales in the country’s eight prime residential markets during the April-June period dipped 79 per cent over the same period last year, according to a quarterly analysis by real estate brokerage firm PropTiger.com.
The report titled ‘Real Insight: Q2 2020’ said that only 19,038 units were sold during April-June this year compared to 92,764 units in Q2 2019. Affordable housing (units priced up to ₹45 lakh) continued to dominate the real estate sector accounting for a 44 per cent share of all sales.
It further added that new launches also decreased significantly during this period as developers remained cautious during the period when commercial activity across sectors slowed down. The trend of decline in launches seen over the last six quarters starting Q1 FY19, continues. Launches fell 81 per cent during the quarter ending June 30 to 12.564 units.
“As anticipated, demand was adversely impacted due to economic uncertainty, combined with growing unemployment. In fact, delivery of existing projects may get pushed back depending on how quickly supply-chain, labour availability and liquidity inflows are restored. We are unlikely to see new launches increase significantly for the next few quarters as developers wait for demand revival and augment their cash flows through sales of existing units,” said Mani Rangarajan, Group COO, PropTiger.com.
The report also said that compared to the levels seen during the same quarter last year, unsold stock declined 13 per cent in the eight cities, primarily on account of fall in new launches.
As on June 30, 2020 developers had 738,335 units of inventory across these markets. At the end of Q2 2019, the unsold stock had stood at 846,460 units.
Due to the strain from the demand side, price growth in India’s prime residential markets remained largely muted, with the majority of cities showing an annual growth of between 1-3 per cent in the past one year.
Eight cities that were covered in the survey were Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi-NCR (Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Faridabad), MMR (Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane) and Pune.