Housing sales have shown a rise in seven major cities – First Quarter Report.

By Abhay Harish Shah, Realty Quarter

The housing market has shown a 13% rise in sales in 7 major cities during January-March 2019. This leads to confidence among real estate and a sign of recovery for the real estate market. In seven towns, namely Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, the year-round housing demand amounted to over 29,000 units.

In the first quarter of 2019, New housing supply increased around 33,000 units compared to last year, which was around 25,700 units only.

According to the report, the key dominant markets were Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR, with a share of almost 70-75% in both new launches and sales.

It is said that the implementation of policies such as GST, Demonetization and RERA also helped to revive the real estate market.

The positive impact of these reforms has led to an increase in new launches by 11% and sales by 19% respectively in 2018.

Metro cities such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru have started showing signs of recovery in the residential market.

While the rise in developer interest in launching new projects is seen, but the focus still remains on completing the ongoing projects and offloading existing inventory. The unsold housing stocks have dropped and the demand is likely to be seen among end user rather than speculators.

Investors have now been conscious and are looking for important factors such as the developer’s profile, project specifications, quality, the pace of construction and execution capabilities.