In 9 cities home sales fell 25%, new launches down 45%

Housing sales declined 25 per cent in nine major cities to 65,799 units during the July-September quarter, while new launches fell 45 per cent as consumer sentiment and demand remained subdued, according to property brokerage firm PropTiger. 

Earlier this month, Anarock and JLL India also reported 18 per cent and one per cent decline, respectively, in housing sales during July-September period across seven major cities. 

In its report 'Real Insight', News Corp-backed PropTiger said that housing sales declined to 65,799 units during July-September 2019 from 88,078 units in the same period last year. 

New launches fell to 33,883 units from 61,679 units during the period under review. 

These cities are -- Mumbai Metropolitan Region (including Navi Mumbai & Thane), Pune, Noida (including Greater Noida & Yamuna Expressway), Gurugram (including Bhiwadi, Dharuhera & Sohna), Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. 

"New launches continued to show a downward trend in the September quarter even as the government continues to move towards a solution to the ongoing NFBC issue, a problem that has dried up a key source of finance for real estate developers in India. As buyers postponed their purchase decisions to time it with the festive season, sales numbers also fell during the quarter," said Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO, Elara Technologies. 

Singapore-based Elara is a full stack real estate technology platform that owns PropTiger.com, Housing.com and Makaan.com. 

"While new launch numbers might continue to fall in the coming quarters due to the liquidity crunch, we expect home sales numbers to improve in the subsequent quarter, factoring in the higher purchase activity that normally takes place during the festival season," he added. 

According to the data, housing sales in Mumbai region fell to 21,985 units during July-September 2019 from 28,563 units in the year-ago period. In Pune, sales fell to 13,644 units from 16,946 units. 

In Bengaluru, demand declined to 7,772 units from 10,929 units. Housing sales in Hyderabad went down to 6,141 units from 6,783 units. 

Housing sales in Ahmedabad fell to 3,951 units from 5,413 units, while demand dipped in Chennai to 3,656 units from 4,898 units. Kolkata saw sales of 3,081 units as against 4,030 units. 

Gurugram witnessed sales of 2,742 units as against 3,988 units, while Noida saw sales of 2,827 units compared to 6,528 units during the period under review. 

PropTiger said that unsold inventory declined 13 per cent year-on-year, primarily because new launches fell at a faster clip than sales did. 

As of September, builders in India's nine top markets have an unsold stock consisting of 7,78,627 units. Notably, more than half of this unsold inventory is affordable stock. 

Barring Hyderabad where property prices have seen a jump of 15 per cent y-o-y, prices have undergone only slight changes in other markets. 

However, only two markets have seen a downward movement in pricing in the past one year, Gurugram (4 per cent) and Chennai (1 per cent). Other markets saw prices appreciate by 2 to 4 per cent y-o-y.

Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters.