Bengaluru: The Covid-19 pandemic had a considerable impact on the Indian housing sector. Residential sales saw a 42% y-o-y drop in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020, reveals the latest data by ANAROCK, a leading real estate services in India.
In the Q1 of 2020, residential sales in the top 7 cities MMR (Mumbai Metropolitan Region), Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata Hyderabad and NCR stood at 45,200 units, against 78,510 units a year ago.
Meanwhile, new launches too fell by 42% annually from 70,480 units in Q1 2019 to approx. 41,200 in Q1 2020. Q-o-q supply also declined by approx. 21%. Yearly trends indicate that MMR and Pune recorded the maximum y-o-y drop of housing supply by 61% and 56% respectively, while Chennai and Kolkata actually displayed positive trends with nearly 16% and 8% yearly rise.
Anuj Puri, Chairman of ANAROCK Property Consultants says, “Given the ongoing global healthcare calamity, it’s no surprise that housing sales and new project launches across India’s top 7 cities decreased both on yearly and quarterly basis. As expected, monthly data trends reveal that March the month when most advisories and lockdown were imposed saw a steep decline in both new launches and housing sales against the preceding two months.”
Perhaps the only silver lining is that developers were able to shed nearly 3% of their unsold inventory in a year from 6.65 lakh units in Q1 2019 to over 6.44 lakh units in Q1 2020. On a quarterly basis, the decline was just 1%.
The top 7 cities saw around 41,200 new units launched in Q1 2020, as opposed to 70,480 units in the corresponding period of 2019 and 51,850 units in Q4 2019.
The key cities contributing to new unit launches in Q1 2020 included MMR (Mumbai Metropolitan Region), Bengaluru, Pune, and NCR - together accounting for 80% of unit additions.
Bengaluru added approximately 8,600 units in Q1 2020 - a quarterly decrease of 18%. Over 87% of new supply was in Rs 80 lakh price bracket. The city’s yearly decline stood at 5%.
Around 45,200 units were sold in Q1 2020 a significant decline of 42% y-o-y, and of 24% over the preceding quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. NCR, MMR, Bengaluru and Pune together accounted for 84% of the sales in the first quarter of the year.
Sales in Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad decreased by 23% each over the previous quarter, with approx. 8,630 units, 7,200 units, and 2,680 units respectively. On yearly basis, the decline in the three major IT hubs stood at 45%, 42% and 50% respectively.
