Housing sales fall 52% in 6 mths across India

The pandemic has hit the real estate sector hard, as a PropTiger report shows that housing sales in the first half of 2020 plunged around 52 per cent across eight major markets.

Around 88,593 units were sold during January-June 2020, compared to over 1.85 lakh units sold during the corresponding period of last year. Supply was severely impacted as 48,232 units were launched during the period under review, 65 per cent lower than the 1.36 lakh units a year ago.

The cities surveyed are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Delhi-NCR, including Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Faridabad and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) including Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane.

The second quarter of 2020 was the worst hit as only 19,038 units were sold across the tier-I markets during the period, 73 per cent lower than 92,764 units in Q2 2019. Affordable housing, units priced up to Rs 45 lakh, continued to dominate the real estate sector accounting for a 44 per cent share of all sales. New launches also decreased significantly during this period as developers remained cautious during a period when commercial activity across sectors slowed down.