Housing sales up 67pc, new supply rises 71 pc in 8 cities during Jan-June: Knight Frank

Property consultant Knight Frank India on Thursday said that housing sales rose 67 per cent year-on-year during the January-June period to 99,416 units across eight cities on better demand primarily in Mumbai and Pune despite the second wave of COVID pandemic.

Before Knight Frank, three more real estate consultants Anarock, PropTiger, and JLL India have released their reports on residential markets for January-June 2021.

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According to Anarock, housing sales rose 43 per cent year-on-year to 82,860 units across seven major cities during January-June 2021. JLL India reported an 18 per cent rise in sales to 45,218 residential units in seven cities.

However, in complete contrast, PropTiger recently reported that sales across the top eight cities fell 7 per cent to 82,144 units from 88,593 units during the period under review.

Knight Frank India on Thursday released its report ?India Real Estate ? Residential, January-June 2021? in a webinar for eight cities -- Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Ahmedabad.

As per the report, 99,416 residential units were sold in the first half of the 2021 calendar year (H1 2021) across eight markets as against 59,538 units in the corresponding period of last year.

"We expect that we will do better than 2020 in housing sales," Knight Frank India Chairman and Managing Director Shishir Baijal said when asked about the outlook of the full calendar year.

With stable property prices and historically low interest rates on home loans, he expected sales momentum to continue during the second half of this year.

According to Knight Frank, new launches of housing units fell 71 per cent to 1,03,238 units from 60,489 units.

Housing prices remained mostly contained with a reduction of 1-2 per cent Year on Year (YoY). Unsold inventories fell one per cent to 4,41,742 units from 4,46,787 units.

"The gradual resumption of economic activity and increasing availability of the vaccine had sparked market traction in the second half of 2020 and this momentum carried over into Q1 2021," Baijal said.

The second wave of COVID-19 infections has impeded this momentum, he said.

However, Baijal said this should be seen as more of a "speed bump" as YoY growth in market volumes remains strong in half-yearly and quarterly terms in the January to June 2021 period.

"The limited period stamp duty cut which spiked home sales in Mumbai and Pune adequately demonstrates the need for policy-level intervention to revive the residential market," he said.

Going by the tremendous success of the stamp duty cut in Maharashtra, Baijal said other states should consider similar demand stimuli at appropriate times.

According to the data, Mumbai saw a 53 per cent year-on-year rise in sales to 28,607 units during January-June this year.

Housing sales in Pune were up 74 per cent to 17,474 units.

Bengaluru saw a 22 per cent growth in sales to 14,812 units while Hyderabad witnessed a 150 per cent rise in sales to 11,974 units.

Sales of residential properties went up 111 per cent in the NCR to 11,474 units.

Chennai saw a 93 per cent rise in sales to 5,751 units, while Kolkata witnessed a 74 per cent increase to 5,115 units.

Housing sales in Ahmedabad rose to 67 per cent year-on-year to 4,208 units during January-June this year.