Amid Covid, Mumbai sees 10-year high in property registrations in July

The registration of properties in the Mumbai municipal region has jumped to its highest in a decade for the month of July, mainly because of the “leeway” given by the Maharashtra government.

As many as 9,037 units were registered in the month as of Friday, as against 2,662 registrations in July 2020, a sharp rise of 239 per cent.  The number of registrations is also 57 per cent higher compared with the pre-pandemic period of July 2019, property consultant Knight Frank said.

In December last year, the state government granted four months to homebuyers to register their properties after the payment of stamp duty in order to prevent crowding of registration offices. This ensured that those who had purchased houses and paid stamp duty on or before March 31, 2021 had a maximum window of four months till July 31 for registering their properties.

Normally, properties need to be registered within three months of the purchase. The leeway was given after the state government cut the stamp duty paid on property transactions in August last year. It was cut to 2 per cent till December, and 3 per cent till March this year.

Before this leeway was permitted, for over 95 per cent of the registrations in recent years, the difference between the date of payment of stamp duty and the date of registration was less than 10 days, and for less than 2 per cent of the registrations, the difference was over 30 days, it said.

The consultant said 53 per cent of the registrations in July 2021 were from new residential sales concluded in the month, recording a sharp improvement compared to 42 per cent in June 2021, 29 per cent during May 2021, and 7 per cent during April 2021.

At 4,824 units (July 30, 2021 till 12 pm), the number of new apartments sold (fresh sales) during July 2021 were 45 per cent higher compared to 3,300 units sold in June 2021, 207 per cent higher compared to 1,554 units sold in May 2021, and 573 per cent higher compared to 710 units sold during April 2021.

To celebrate the International Women’s Day, the state government announced a 1 per cent rebate in stamp duty for women homebuyers, effective from April 1, 2021.

As a result, women homebuyers constituted 6.6 per cent of the new home sales in April, paying a discounted stamp duty rate of 4 per cent over their purchase. The share of women homebuyers in May 2021 dropped to 1.7 per cent. In June, the share increased to 4.7 per cent, but fell to 3 per cent in July.