Housing sales up 9% to 78,627 units during Jan-Mar: Knight Frank India

Housing sales rose 9 per cent to 78,627 units during the January-March period, highest quarterly sales in the last four years, across eight major cities, according to property consultant Knight Frank India.

Last week, two other consultants Anarock and PropTiger released their data for residential markets.

Anarock said that housing sales across seven cities increased 71 per cent in January-March to 99,550 units, while PropTiger reported that sales increased 7 per cent year-on-year to 70,623 units during January-March across eight major cities.

"In the first quarter of 2022, 78,627 new homes were sold across the top eight cities which was higher by 9 per cent YoY (year-on-year) as against same time last year," the consultant said in a statement.

"This far exceeded the pre-pandemic average quarterly sales volume for the third consecutive quarter signifying a sustained recovery in demand across the country," it added.

Housing sales in DelhiNCR more than doubled to 15,019 units, while Bengaluru saw 34 per cent growth in housing sales at 13,663 units.

Ahmedabad grew at 35 per cent with sales of 4,105 units.

Housing sales in Hyderabad grew only one per cent at 6,993 units, while Kolkata also saw a very marginal rise of 1 per cent in sales of new homes at 3,619 units.

However, Mumbai saw sales of 21,548 new units in January-March 2022, registering a 9 per cent decline from the year-ago period.

"Pune recorded sales of 10,305 new homes in Q1 2022 which was lower by 25 per cent YoY. While the drop seems substantial, it must be noted that the base period was a record quarter in terms of sales due to the stamp duty cut provided by the state government to incentivise sales at that time," Knight Frank said.

Chennai witnessed a drop of 17 per cent in sales to 3,376 units during January-March 2022, compared to the year-ago period.

Shishir Baijal, Chairman & Managing Director, Knight Frank India, "the growth in the residential market has been impressive for the key markets of India over the last few quarters, as a result of a strengthening economy as well as individual financial confidence."

"Low interest rates, best affordability levels, healthy wage growth and the waning pandemic with lower risk of further disruptions have created a favorable environment for homebuyers who have rediscovered the need for new and better housing," he added.

While financial stress remains a significant factor for developers across markets, Baijal said healthy and sustained homebuyer activity should pave the way for gradual price increases and enable them to tide over the rise in costs of critical inputs like cement and steel.

Housing prices rose across all markets in the range of 1-7 per cent year-on-year, Knight Frank India said.