IT city Gurugram in Haryana witnessed the highest drop of 63 per cent in housing sales during the January-March period of this year, on poor demand amid the lockdown to check coronavirus disease, according to a report by data analytic firm PropEquity.
Housing sales declined 27 per cent to 55,138 units during the first three months of the calendar year 2020 from 75,534 units in the year-ago period across nine major cities -- Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Thane, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.
In the first three months of 2029, PropEquity said the maximum sales happened in January and February as demand was affected last month because of coronavirus outbreak and subsequent nationwide lockdown.
PropEquity data showed that the maximum fall among nine cities was seen in Gurugram where sales plunged by 63 per cent to 1,650 units from 4,474 units during the period under review.
Noida in Uttar Pradesh saw 8 per cent fall to 1,177 units in January-March 2020 from 1,275 units in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Noida property market is dominated by affordable housing projects with price range of Rs 30-50 lakh while the ticket size in Gurugram is higher.
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According to the data, housing sales in Bengaluru fell 30 per cent to 9,059 units from 12,928 units.
Chennai and Kolkata witnessed 36 per cent fall in sales at 3,265 units and 3673 units, respectively.
Sales in Hyderabad were down by 37 per cent to 4,349 units from 6,876 units.
In Maharashtra, the sales of residential properties fell by 16 per cent in Mumbai to 5332 units from 6,326 units. Thane saw 8 per cent fall from 13,941 units to 12,895 units.
Sales in Pune stood at 13,738 units during January-March 2020, down 27 per cent from 18,864 units in the year-ago period.
"Beginning of Q1 (first quarter) was relatively better for the Indian real estate sector as many projects which were rightly priced attracted decent demand, especially for the projects which were nearing completion.
"However, since mid-March onwards, the real estate market came to a grinding halt due to the lockdown announced by the government, we expect transactions to resume only when there is certainty that the infection is contained and the number of cases start dropping, Samir Jasuja, founder and managing director at PropEquity said.
P.E. Analytics owns and operates PropEquity, which is a leading online real estate data and analytics platform. It covers data of more than one lakh projects of over 34,000 developers across 44 cities in India.