Housing sales down by 9.5% in July-September across major cities: Report

Housing sales fell by 9.5 percent during the July-September period across nine major cities, including Mumbai, on account of low demand as economic slowdown and liquidity crisis weighed on buyer sentiment, a PropEquity report said.

This is the fourth such report that has shown a fall in housing sales in Q3 of 2019. Prior to this, PropTiger and Anarock, which are major brokerage firms in the housing segment, reported 25 percent and 18 percent fall in housing sales, respectively.

Real estate consultant JLL India, which is a dominant player in the leasing of commercial properties, noted a one percent decline in the same period.

According to data analytics firm PropEquity, housing sales stood at 52,855 units during July-September 2019, down 9.5 percent from 58,461 units in the year-ago period.

“Demand has been definitely impacted in the last quarter with buyers delaying their decisions,” Samir Jasuja, founder and managing director at PropEquity said.

“The downtrend observed was mainly due to the economic slow down as well as the liquidity crisis in the market,” the report said.

PropEquity said that the real estate market is currently an end user-driven market with customers preferring ready to move-in or nearing completion properties.

“Furthermore, consumers are now looking for developers with excellent track records in terms of quality and execution,” it added.

New launches too fell 24 percent to 32,834 units. Unsold housing stocks came down to 6,01,785 units from 6,21,806 units at the end of June quarter.

As per the PropEquity data, housing sales fell in seven cities and increased only in two cities.

Chennai saw the maximum fall of 25 percent in housing sales at 3,060 units during July-September 2019 as against 4,080 units in the year-ago period.

Housing sales dropped 22 percent in Mumbai to 5,063 units from 6,491 units, followed by Hyderabad that saw a 16 percent decline to 4,257 units from 5,067 units.

Kolkata witnessed a 12 percent fall in sales to 3,069 units from 3,487 units, while Noida saw an 11 percent decline to 990 units from 1,112 units.

Sales in Bengaluru, too, went down by 9 percent to 9,843 units from 10,816 units. Thane saw a 9 percent dip in sales to 10,714 units from 11,773 units.

However, Gurugram witnessed a 7 percent rise in sales to 1,190 units from 1,112 flats and Pune saw one percent increase to 14,669 units from 14,523 apartments during the period under review.