Housing sales up 33 pc in March quarter in 9 cities: PropTiger

New Delhi: Showing signs of revival, housing sales increased by 33 per cent in nine major cities during the March quarter this year to 80,000 units, according to News Corp-backed realty portal PropTiger.

Sales were at 59,936 units in the first quarter of last year. In its latest report 'Realty Decoded', PropTiger said that barring Hyderabad, housing sales have risen in all nine cities during January-March 2018.

Sales rose maximum in Noida by 69 per cent during January-March 2018 to 7,933 units compared with the year-ago period, followed by Gurgaon where sales were up by 62 per cent at 1,964 units.

"The sales numbers for the past quarter are very encouraging. While it might still be too early to celebrate, these are early indications that things are beginning to look up for the residential real estate sector," Dhruv Agarwala, the CEO of PropTiger, Housing and Makaan, told PTI.

Real estate sector, particularly housing, is going through a multi-year slowdown mainly due to high property prices and huge delays in delivery of projects in key Delhi-NCR market.

Housing demand and supply got further impacted due to demonetisation and implementation of new real estate regulatory law RERA and the GST during last year.

However, PropTiger said sales have improved after a continuous drop in sales for the last four years and therefore raises hopes of a revival in the market.

According to the data, Pune witnessed 56 per cent rise in sales to 15,885 units, while in Bengaluru they went up by 46 per cent to 11,706 units.

Sales grew by 40 per cent in Mumbai at 25,281 units, 25 per cent in Chennai at 5,075 units and 16 per cent in Kolkata at 3,873 units. In Ahmedabad, housing sales were marginally up at 3,205 units. However, Hyderabad saw 29 per cent decline in sales at 5,077 units during the period under review.

"After a stressful 2017, the first quarter of 2018 calendar year has come as a breath of fresh air for the residential real estate industry, rekindling hopes of a revival for the sector during this year," said Ankur Dhawan, Chief Investment Officer, PropTiger.com.

The real estate developers were willing to reduce prices to sell their unsold units and improve their cash flows, he said, while hoping that the market to start showing a steady improvement in sales going forward. In this report, the number of Noida includes sales from Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway.

Mumbai includes Navi Mumbai and Thane, while Gurgaon includes Bhiwadi, Dharuhera and Sohna. Singapore-based Elara Technologies is the owner of Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com.

The company provides digital real estate marketing and transactions services. Elara Technologies formed PropTiger.com in 2011 and later acquired Makaan.com in May 2015 and Housing.com in January 2017 aiming to create India's largest full service online-to-offline real estate platform.

While Makaan largely deals in buy-sell of re-sale properties, group company PropTiger helps developers in selling flats available in primary market. Housing.com is a classified platform for both developers and brokers.