Housing sales and new project launches spiral downwards in Q3FY20: PropTiger report

New project launches in India’s nine key residential markets continued to show a decline, falling 44 per cent year-on-year in the period between October and December 2019, primarily on liquidity concerns, as per the report by PropTiger.com, part of Elara Technologies, that also owns Housing.com and Makaan.com.  New launches fell across markets, with Kolkata and Gurugram seeing the biggest fall, at 79 and 74 per

cent, respectively.   As buyers showed greater faith towards ready homes, inventory levels, declined 12% during the quarter. 

       Housing sales in India’s nine key property markets fell 30% annually during the October-December quarter despite the government launching several measures in the recent past to revive buyer sentiment. As against 91,464 units sold during the quarter last year, only 64,034 homes were sold across the nine markets in Q3 this year.

       According to “Real Insight Q3FY20”, a quarterly analysis of India’s nine key property markets by PropTiger DataLabs, the ongoing industry concerns related to the NBFC sector, on which real estate developers largely depend on for their financial needs, has made borrowing difficult for builders at a time when a demand slowdown has hit housing sales. This double whammy has resulted in developers continuing to show a cautious stance towards new project launches. 

     “Considering real estate is a major contributor to overall GDP, which hit a glacial 4.5% rate of growth in the July-September period, we expect further assistance from the government, which would nudge buyers to invest in real estate,” said Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO, Elara Technologies, the country’s only full stack real estate technology platform that owns Housing.com, Makaan.com and Proptiger.com.