Housing sales dip over 9% in Q2 as slowdown weighs on buyers' sentiment

Housing sales declined 9.5 per cent during July-September period across nine major cities to 52,855 units on low demand as economic slowdown and liquidity crisis weighed on buyer sentiment, a PropEquity report said.

This is the fourth such report that has shown fall in housing sales during the third quarter of the 2019 calendar year.

PropTiger and Anarock, which are a major brokerage firms in housing segment, have reported 25 per cent and 18 per cent fall in housing sales, respectively, during July-September period. Real estate consultant JLL India, which is a dominant player in leasing of commercial properties, saw one per cent decline.

According to data analytics firm PropEquity, housing sales stood at 52,855 units during July-September 2019, down 9.5 per cent from 58,461 units in the year-ago period.

"Demand has been definitely impacted in the last quarter with buyers delaying their decisions," Samir Jasuja, founder and managing director at PropEquity said.

"The downtrend observed was mainly due to the economic slow down as well as the liquidity crisis in the market," the report said.

PropEquity said that real estate market is currently an end user-driven market with customers preferring ready to move-in or nearing completion properties.

"Furthermore, consumers are now looking for developers with excellent track records in terms of quality and execution," it added.

New launches too fell 24 per cent to 32,834 units. Unsold housing stocks came down to 6,01,785 units from 6,21,806 units at the end of June quarter.

As per the PropEquity data, housing sales fell in seven cities and increased only in two cities.

Chennai saw the maximum fall of 25 per cent in housing sales at 3,060 units during July-September 2019 as against 4,080 units in the year-ago period.

Housing sales dropped 22 per cent in Mumbai to 5,063 units from 6,491 units, followed by Hyderabad that saw 16 per cent decline to 4,257 units from 5,067 units.

Kolkata witnessed a 12 per cent fall in sales to 3,069 units from 3,487 units, while Noida saw 11 per cent decline to 990 units from 1,112 units.

Sales in Bengaluru, too, went down by 9 per cent to 9,843 units from 10,816 units. Thane saw 9 per cent dip in sales to 10,714 units from 11,773 units.

However, Gurugram witnessed 7 per cent rise in sales to 1,190 units from 1,112 flats and Pune saw one per cent increase to 14,669 units from 14,523 apartments during the period under review.

PropEquity, which is owned by P E Analytics, is an online subscription based real estate data and analytics platform covering over 1,15,225 projects of 32,745 developers across over 44 cities in India.