Home sales drop by over 80% in top 7 cities in first quarter

Indians are shying away from buying homes as the economy hit by the Covid 19 induced national lockdown showed signs of acute slowdown. Sale of houses across India’s top seven cities have plunged by 81 per cent year on year in the second quarter of the current financial year, a study by Anarock Real Estate Consultancy revealed. As many as 68,600 units were sold in the second quarter last year while this year the figure is just 12,720.

Concurrently, new residential project launches fell by 97 per cent during the same period. Merely 1,390 units were launched this quarter. The study showed that new launches comprise just four projects – two in Bengaluru and one each in Pune and Kolkata.

"A massive drop in both new launches and housing sales were, of course, expected on the back of a complete lockdown for most of this quarter,” Anuj Puri, chairman, Anarock Property Consultants said in a statement.

There have been no new launches in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Delhi and its national capital region (NCR) besides Hyderabad and Chennai.

Earlier Anarock said that overall residential sales in 2019 stood at about 2.61 lakh units across top seven cities. This year could seriously drop as the Indian economy is expected to contract this year.

With economic activities including construction now gradually picking up, challenges which include acute labour shortage could spoil the party.

Besides, deliveries could also get delayed. Anarock has already said that about 4.66 lakh units across the seven major cities, scheduled to be ready and delivered by the year end could miss the deadline and unless the labour shortage is addressed immediately, project deliveries will stutter going forward.

An estimated 50 to 60 per cent of the on-site labourers engaged in the construction sector have returned to their native villages leading to a shortage in workforce..