Housing prices go up in 18 cities in Aprl-June14: NHB Residex

Residential housing prices in 18 cities including Mumbai, Pune, Coimbatore and Indore have shown a marginal increase in the range of 0.5-3.9% during the April-June quarter this year compared to the previous quarter.

According to the Residex by National Housing Bank (NHB), which tracks 26 cities now, the prices in 6 cities including Delhi declined during the same quarter 2014, while in rest, the prices were stagnant.

The maximum increase was observed in Pune at 3.9% followed by Coimbatore at 3.5%, Indore - 3.3%, Guwahati - 3.2%, Patna - 2.7% and Kolkata - 2.4% and Bhubneshwar - 0.5%. Mumbai showed a rise of 1.75%.

NHB Residex as launched in July 2007 and it tracks the movement in prices of residential properties on a quarterly basis. From the quarter January-March, 2013 NHB Residex has been expanded to include six new cities namely Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Meerut, Nagpur and Raipur and it now covers 26 cities.

Prices in Hyderabad and Raipur have remained stagnant.

Six cities have shown decline in prices over the previous quarter with maximum decline in Chandigarh at 4.4%, followed by Meerut at 3.6%, Delhi at 3%.

The Residex is expected to bring greater uniformity and standardisation as well as greater transparency in the valuation of properties across the industry.

The realty sector is facing a period of low sales and high inventory coupled with funding issues. The market has started showing signs of revival with little uptake in sales during the start of festival season this year but experts say a full revival is 6-9 months away.