Housing sales drop 79% in top 8 cities in April-June

Housing sales dropped 79 per cent in eight major cities in April-June as demand for new residences saw a huge downturn amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Real estate brokerage firm PropTiger said in its report Real Insight: Q2 2020 that sales dipped to 19,038 units.

Sale of residential properties had dipped 52 per cent across the eight cities in January-June period. The cities included Delhi-NCR (including Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Faridabad), MMR (including Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane), Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune.

Hyderabad saw the sharpest decline of 86 per cent to 1,099 units in April-June as against 8,122 units in the same period the previous year. Ahmedabad also saw 83 per cent decline to 1,181 units in the same period, compared to 6,784 units in the year-ago period.

NCR saw 81 per cent decline in sales to 1,886 units in April-June as against 9,759 units in the previous year.

Sales in Kolkata, Pune, Bengaluru and Chennai fell 75 per cent, 74 per cent, 73 per cent and 70 per cent in the April-June period. Kolkata sold 1,317 units as against 5,268 units the year before, while Pune sold 4,908 units against last year's 18,581 units. Bengaluru saw a dip from 10,251 units last year to 2,776 units in April-June, while Chennai said a fall to 1,312 units from 4,364 units.

"The current pandemic is an unprecedented Black Swan event that is expected to contract growth in the global economy, including that of India. As anticipated, demand was adversely impacted due to economic uncertainty combined with growing unemployment," Mani Rangarajan, Group COO of Housing.com, Makaan.com and PropTiger, as mentioned in a report in Business Standard.

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