Housing sales rise by 9% during Jan-Mar across top 8 cities
NEW DELHI: Housing sales rose 9% to 78,627 units during January-March, the highest quarterly sales in the last four years, across eight major cities, according to property consultant Knight Frank India.
Last week, two other consultants Anarock and PropTiger released their data for residential markets. Housing sales across seven cities increased 71% in January-March to 99,550 units, Anarock said, while PropTiger reported that sales increased 7% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 70,623 units during January-March across eight major cities.
“In the first quarter of 2022, 78,627 new homes were sold across the top eight cities, which was higher by 9% year-on-year (y-o-y) as against same time last year,” according to Knight Frank India. “This far exceeded the prepandemic average quarterly sales volume for the third consecutive quarter signifying a sustained recovery in demand across the country,” it said.
Housing sales in the national capital region more than doubled to 15,019 units, while Bengaluru saw 34% growth at 13,663 units. Ahmedabad grew by 35% with sales of 4,105 units.
Housing sales in Hyderabad grew only 1% at 6,993 units, while Kolkata also saw a very marginal rise of 1% in sales of new homes at 3,619 units. However, Mumbai saw sales of 21,548 new units in January-March 2022, registering a 9% decline from the year-ago period.
“Pune recorded sales of 10,305 new homes in Q1 2022 which was lower by 25% y-o-y. While the drop seems substantial, it must be noted that the base period was a record quarter in terms of sales because of the reduction in stamp duty provided by the state government to incentivise sales at that time,” Knight Frank said.
Chennai witnessed a drop of 17% in sales to 3,376 units during January-March 2022, compared to the year-ago period.
“The growth in the residential sector has been impressive for the key markets of India over the last few quarters, as a result of a strengthening economy as well as individual financial confidence,” said Shishir Baijal, chairman and managing director, Knight Frank India.
“Low interest rates, best affordability levels, healthy wage growth and the waning pandemic with lower risk of further disruptions have created a favorable environment for homebuyers who have rediscovered the need for new and better housing,” he said.
Financial stress remains a significant factor for developers across markets, but Baijal said healthy and sustained homebuyer activity should pave the way for gradual price increases and enable them to tide over the rise in costs of critical inputs such as cement and steel.
Housing prices rose across all markets in the range of 1-7% y-o-y, Knight Frank India said.