No festive cheer for realty sector
MUMBAI The upcoming Diwali festival is unlikely to bring cheer to the realty sector in Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which is witnessing a massive slowdown.
Currently, the unsold stock in the MMR stands at 2.40 lakh units, while for Mumbai the figure has crossed 80,000. For years, Dussera, Gudi Padwa, Akshay Tritiya and Diwali are considered auspicious occasions to book apartments. However, with recession hitting the sector, the number of launches as well as sales has dipped significantly in the past few years.
Jones Lang Lasalle (JLL) India, a real estate consultancy firm, said affordability is still a prime issue.
“The sales traditionally increase by up to 25-30% during the festive season. However, this year, we are not seeing more than 15-20% increase, as the sentiment is subdued and there is an affordability gap in the larger cities like Mumbai,” said Anuj Puri, and country head, JLL India.
Builders are coming up with various offers such as cash discounts, waiver in government taxes such as stamp duty and registration fees, free gold coins as well as flexible payment options. According to Liases Foras, a real estate research firm, the huge inventory needs to be tackled. “Builders are trying their best to offload their stock by giving discounts and making various offers,” said Pankaj Kapoor, CEO, Liases Foras.
Builders feel sales are a problem. “Buyers are waiting and as a result new launches have slowed down. We expect a boost in sales on Dhanteras,” said Vipul Shah, managing director, Parinee Group. MUMBAI: The legal metrology organization (LMO) of the state government seized packaged commodities worth Rs84lakh supplied by two online shopping portals for flouting package com modity norms.
The LMO recently inspected the Instacart premises in Bhi wandi, the service provider com pany for Flipkart India and Ama zon Sellers Services private lim ited, and found the seized packages did not have declara tion regarding name and address of the manufacturer, packer importer, price of the package customer care number, e-mai address, date of manufacturing packing or importing printed on the packages to be delivered to the customers. Similarly, name of the commodity and price of the packages were not declared as per the rules, said LMO sources
A statement from an Amazon spokesperson read, “Officials from the State Metrology depart ment visited our Fulfilment Cen ter in Mumbai earlier this week to review products in the build ing for certain sellers. We are working closely with them and extending the necessary sup port.”
Flipkart did not respond to calls and texts sent by HT.
Eighteen types of packaged commodities worth Rs37 lakh were seized from Instacart and 21 types of packaged commodi ties worth Rs47.7 lakh from Ama zon Sellers. A press note released by the LMO said cases have been registered against Instacaft Flipkart, Amazon Sellers Servi ces, Bhiwandi.