Housing sales down 11 pc in Q1; demand to rise on tax sops: PropTiger

New Delhi: Housing sales fell 11 per cent in April-June 2019-20 across nine major cities to nearly 72,000 units but demand is expected to rise due to additional tax sops in the Budget for affordable homes and political stability at the Centre, as per a report.

New housing supply fell 47 per cent to 37,852 units in nine cities due to liquidity crunch and general elections, the report by News Corp-backed property brokerage firm PropTiger said.

The nine cities covered in the report are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Noida and Pune.

"While we saw a decline in both sales and launches in Q1 FY'20, the outlook is optimistic going forward. A stable government at the Centre and a Union Budget that announced several favourable measures for the residential real estate sector are likely to act as catalysts," said Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO of PropTiger, Housing.com and Makaan.com.

He said traffic at the group's all three portals increased during the April-June quarter, but it seems that people were on wait and watch mode because of general elections.

Agarwala expected housing demand to rise in the coming months on the back of the rise in the tax deduction limit on the interest payable on home loans to Rs 3.50 lakh for affordable homes from the current Rs 2 lakh limit, as announced in the Budget.

"Additionally, several banks have lowered interest rates after the RBI reduced the repo rate to a record low. We are confident that these measures are likely to stimulate home sales in the coming quarters," Agarwala said.

According to the data, housing sales increased in four cities -- Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune -- and declined in the remaining five.

Gurugram witnessed the highest increase of 32 per cent in housing sales at 4,951 units during April-June 2019 from 3,737 units in the year-ago period.

Housing sales in Hyderabad and Kolkata rose 10 per cent at 6,204 units and 3,481 units, respectively. Pune saw a 5 per cent rise in demand at 14,998 units.

However, Noida saw a steep 56 per cent decline at 3,304 units, followed by 36 per cent dip in Ahmedabad at 3,362 units, as per PropTiger.com's 'Real Insight Report' for April-June 2019-20.

Sales in Bengaluru went down 17 per cent at 8,431 units, while demand fell 14 per cent in MMR at 22,652 units. Chennai saw a modest 2 per cent fall at 4,574 units during the period under review.

PropTiger.com is part of Singapore-based Elara Technologies Pte Ltd, which also owns Housing.com, Makaan.com and FastFox.com.