Supply of new homes down 60 per cent in Jan-Mar: report

New Delhi: Sitting on huge unsold housing inventories, real estate developers across nine major cities launched only 27,800 units during March quarter, down 60 per cent from the year-ago period, as they focused on clearing existing stocks, says a report.

Launches of new homes stood at 69,489 units during January-March last year, News Corp-backed realty portal PropTiger said in the latest report.

"Overall launches in the top 9 cities declined 60 per cent in the first quarter of 2018 over the year-ago period, reflecting the continued focus of developers on selling existing projects rather than launching new projects. "However, Bengaluru saw 50 per cent jump and Kolkata witnessed 8 per cent jump in new launches. Mumbai had the worst quarter in terms of new launches with a drop of 81 per cent compared to March quarter of 2017," the report 'Realty Decoded' said.

The study covered nine key Indian cities including Mumbai, Pune, Noida, Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. New supply of apartments continues to be sluggish due to unsold housing stocks with the developers and implementation of the new real estate law RERA from May last year.

Under the law, real estate players are required to register their projects with the regulator before launching and marketing them. According to the data, Noida region - including Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway - witnessed a decline of 66 per cent in launches at 1,553 units during January-March 2018 compared with 4,531 units in the same quarter last year.

Launches in Gurgaon plunged 52 per cent to 2,666 units from 5,501 units. Gurgaon includes Bhiwadi, Dharuhera and Sohna markets. Mumbai, including Navi Mumbai and Thane, saw a fall of 81 per cent in launches to 5,296 units from 27,257 units, while new supply in Pune dropped 66 per cent to 3,370 units from 9,936 units.

Launches declined 57 per cent in Hyderabad to 3,419 units from 7,920 units. In Chennai, new supply of flats fell 24 per cent to 2,266 units from 2,996 units. There was no new supply in Ahmedabad.

According to the data, new launches increased by 50 per cent in Bengaluru at 5,676 units and by 8 per cent in Kolkata at 3,554 units. Unlike new supply, housing sales increased 33 per cent in the nine cities during March quarter this year to 80,000 units.

Real estate sector, particularly housing, is going through a multi-year demand. The housing demand and supply got further impacted due to demonetisation and RERA as well as GST. Singapore-based Elara Technologies is the owner of Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com.

The company provides digital real estate marketing and transaction services. Elara 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.