New Launches Fall 20%, Home Sales Decline 2%: Report

It might take India’s real estate sector a couple of quarters before it could regain its past glory, data show. Numbers available with PropTiger.com show new launches in the second quarter of this calendar year declined 20 per cent when compared to the same quarter the previous year. Home sales, on the other hand, declined two per cent in the same period. While the fall in new launches could be attributed to the fact that real estate developers are busy finishing their ongoing projects, the marginal decline in sales numbers is indicative of builders cutting on their marketing budget to use the saving during the upcoming festive season.

The nine cities covered in the study are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida and Pune.

New launches: Chennai, Bengaluru, Noida, Hyderabad defy trend

While overall new launches saw a decline, some cities saw an increase in the same. While Noida saw the highest jump in new launches when compared to the second quarter of the previous calendar year, Chennai was second in the list. Bengaluru and Hyderabad also registered an increase in new launch numbers. Millennium City Gurgaon, on the other hand, registered the biggest fall in new launch numbers.

Sales: Noida performs better

While overall home sales numbers remained flat during the quarter, there cities saw home sales going up. While home sales increased 51 per cent in Noida in Q2 CY2018 over the same quarter previous year, Mumbai (15 per cent) and Pune (9 per cent) also saw numbers moving up.

Numbers also indicate that unsold units across markets have come down by nine per cent y-o-y.

“The numbers reveal that the market is changing ... We expect both new launches and sales to show improvements in next two quarters driven by an uptick in economy as well as stabilisation of regulatory infrastructure. Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Noida have shown substantial improvement in the last quarter and we anticipate these cities to be the star markets in 201,” says PropTiger.com Chief Investment Officer Ankur Dhawan.