 "Coronavirus, real estate, realty, construction, housing sales")
The demand for residential properties for buying and renting is rising in tier-II and -III cities after the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, driven by reverse migration of large number of workforce to smaller towns, according to Housing.com report.
In its report 'Time for Internal Globalisation - Small Cities Setting the Tone for Revival', News Corp and Softbank-backed realty portal stated that the virtual demand for buying/renting of homes has grown almost three times in August from the year-ago period.
Housing.com released 'Virtual Residential Demand Index' that jumped to 210 points for 'Shadow Cities' or tier-II/III cities compared to 150 for the metros post the nation entering into Unlock Phase 4.0.
"On our Housing.com platform during last few months, we have seen a significant uptick in interest levels for residential properties especially from shadow cities such as Amritsar, Chandigarh, Vadodara, Nagpur, Vijayawada and Coimbatore," said Dhruv Agarwala, the CEO of Elara Technologies that owns Proptiger, Makaan and Housing.com.
The index renders this trend more prominently post May 2020, he added.
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Going forward, Agarwala said, the reverse migrations and the concept of remote working would have "powerful reverberations" on the future of residential demand.
The analysis of online interest parameters suggest that the interest in the smaller cities has been gradually increasing and the share increased to 27 percent in the first half of 2020, as compared to 18 percent in the same period in 2019, Housing.com said.
"Post the sharp decline in virtual interest in April 2020, it has recovered rather quickly and has been on an upswing since then with virtual interest for residential spaces between JuneAugust 2020, overarching the pre-COVID levels of JanuaryMarch 2020," the report said.
Cities such as Agra and Amritsar witnessed an impressive growth of more than 100 percent in the virtual residential demand over pre-COVID times, while cities of Vadodara, Ludhiana, Mangaluru, Chandigarh and Lucknow saw more than 80 percent growth in residential demand.
On the other hand, the top 8 cities, which have been severely hit by the pandemic have witnessed a subdued growth in virtual demand for residential spaces over the pre-COVID period, the report said.
Housing.com noted that the disruption in the economy and job uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic led to significant 'reverse migration' of population --- both informal migrant population and employees in formal service sector who have either lost their jobs or working remotely.
"This reverse migration, with workforce moving back to their hometowns or smaller cities is one of the key drivers that is rallying the growth of not only the e-commerce platforms but is also surging the online search traffic for buying and renting residential spaces in the 'Shadow Cities'," the report said.
Though development in 'shadow cities' has moved at a snail's pace, Housing.com said the current pandemic has broughtstructural changes and accelerated the process of deeper market penetration in 'Shadow Cities' across sectors.
"Steered by the thrust on digitisation, and an aspirational cohort, Shadow Cities are exhibiting readiness for global brands across categories of fashion, luxury cars, jewellery, real estate among many others," Agarwala observed.
Vishal Gupta, MD, Ashiana Housing, said the pandemic will see the emergence of new cities.
"Tier-II cities with good infrastructure, air connectivity and affordable real estate prices will grow into mega cities as the young will choose to live in bigger, better houses in their native environment," Gupta added.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
