Amid Covid, Mumbai sees 10-year high in property registrations in July

Mumbai city and suburbs saw decade high registrations in properties in July this year as leeway to register properties bought before March 31 ends tomorrow. A total of 2,662 units registered in July 2020.

July saw a 239 per cent YoY growth in property registrations. A total of 2,662 units registered in July 2020

The registrations for July 2021 were also 57 per cent higher compared with the same month in pre-pandemic period of July 2019, Knight Frank said today.

The Maharashtra government had, in December 2020, given a leeway of four months to homebuyers to register a property after the payment of stamp duty in order to prevent crowding of registration offices. This gave homebuyers who had purchased residences and paid stamp duty on or before March 31, 2021 a maximum window of four months till July 31, 2021 from the respective date of payment of stamp duty for registering their apartment, the consultant said.

Before this leeway was permitted, for over 95 per cent of registrations in the recent years, the difference between date of payment of stamp duty and date of registration was less than 10 days and for less than 2 per cent of the registrations, the difference was over 30 days.

Knight Frank said that 53 per cent of registrations in July 2021 were from new residential sales concluded in the month, recording a sharp improvement compared to 42 per cent in June 2021, 29 per cent during May 2021 and 7 per cent during April 2021. At 4,824 units (July 30, 2021 till 1200 hours), the number of new apartments sold (fresh sales) during July 2021 were 45 per cent higher than 3,300 units sold in June 2021, and 207 per cent higher than 1,554 units sold in May 2021. They were 573 per cent higher than 710 units sold during April 2021.

While registrations in July 2021 are at a decadal high (for the month of July), it is important to note that 53% of registrations or 4,824 units2 were new sales which is around 84% of July 2019 average, implying that we are yet to cross sales of pre-Covid levels.

On March 8 2021, to celebrate International Women’s Day, the Maharashtra Government announced a 1 per cent rebate in stamp duty for women homebuyers effective from 1st April 2021. As a result of which women homebuyers constituted 6.6 per cent of new home sales in the month of April 2021 paying a discounted stamp duty rate of 4% over their purchase. In May 2021, the share of women homebuyers in May 2021 dropped to 1.7 per cent. In June, the share of women homebuyers registered increased to 4.7 per cent, however, it fell to three per cent in July 2021.

Shishir Baijal, Chairman & Managing Director, Knight Frank India said, . The fact that new registrations for the month of July has also shown an encourage increase over last few months also bears testimony to the fact that demand for new homes remains intact. Further, to promote the cause of home ownership amongst women, the state government had offered stamp duty concessions of 1 per cent to women homebuyers. However, we are yet to see a meaningful pick-up in apartments registered in the name of women. We feel that the incentives under this initiative need to be enhanced further.”