11 pc in housing sales in Q1

Housing sales fell 11 per cent in April-June 2019-20 across nine major cities to nearly 72,000 units, but the demand is expected to rise due to additional tax sops in the Budget for affordable homes and political stability at the Centre, as per a report.

New housing supply fell 47 per cent to 37,852 units in nine cities due to liquidity crunch and general elections, the report by property brokerage firm PropTiger said.

The nine cities covered in the report are:  Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Noida and Pune.

“While we saw a decline in both sales and launches in Q1 FY'20, the outlook is optimistic going forward. A stable government at the Centre and a Union Budget that announced several favourable measures for the residential real estate sector are likely to act as catalysts,” said Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO of PropTiger, Housing.com and Makaan.com.

According to the data, housing sales increased in four cities — Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune — and declined in the remaining five.

Gurugram witnessed the highest increase of 32 per cent in housing sales at 4,951 units during April-June 2019 from 3,737 units in the year-ago period.

However, Noida saw steep 56 per cent decline at 3,304 units, followed by 36 per cent dip in Ahmedabad at 3,362 units, as per PropTiger.com's 'Real Insight Report' for April-June 2019-20.

Office leasing on a high

Office leasing is on a high in 2019. According to India Office Market View - Q2 2019 report released by CBRE, leasing activity has seen a 40 per cent jump as compared to H1 2018, crossing 30 million sq. ft. during the first half of 2019. 

Overall in H1 2019, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, NCR and Mumbai accounted for about 80 per cent leasing in the country. Elaborating on the report findings, Anshuman Magazine, Chairman & CEO, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa - CBRE, said, “Increasingly, a larger number of global and domestic firms are positioning India as the destination for higher skilled requirements, either for their global operations (through Global In-house Centers - GICs) or for tech-driven services, rather than low-end processes. As a result, we anticipate that the share of tech corporates in overall office space take-up would remain strong in 2019, a trend already visible in the first half of the year”.

Almost 29 million sq ft of new office supply was added in the first half of the year. Four cities — Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and NCR accounted for more than 80 per cent of this supply addition. Ram Chandnani, Managing Director, Advisory & Transaction Services, India - CBRE South Asia Pvt. Ltd, said, “The office space take-up was majorly driven by tech corporates accounting for about half of the leasing activity during Q2 2019.” 

With the office market looking at another strong year in terms of space take-up, rental growth is expected to sustain across most micro-markets for the next few quarters.