Housing prices rise by around 1% in 20 major cities: NHB

Housing prices have increased marginally by an average 1.1% in 20 major cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, in January-March 2013 over the previous quarter due to slowdown in demand, National Housing Bank said today.

Residential housing prices in 12 cities have shown increase in prices in this quarter ended March, 2013 over the previous quarter (October-December, 2012), quarterly update of NHB Residex said.

On the contrary, eight cities have shown decline in prices over the previous quarter with maximum fall observed in Guwahati (-7.84%) followed by Ludhiana (-6.71%), Surat (-6.67%).

Besides, price correction was witnessed in Kolkata by 5.75%, Lucknow by 3.18%, Hyderabad 2.23% and Chennai 1.28%.

"Property prices in majority of the cities are witnessing marginal upward trend," NHB said in a statement.

Price increase was witnessed in Jaipur (28.74%) followed by Bhubneshwar (14.54%), Pune (7.81%), Bhopal (6.49%), Delhi (3.59%), Bengaluru (2.83%), Mumbai (2.31%), Kochi (2.30%) and Faridabad (0.98%).

NHB RESIDEX tracks the movement in prices of residential properties on a quarterly basis since 2007. The index for Delhi includes property transactions in Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad.

NHB RESIDEX has been expanded to include six new cities namely Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Meerut, Nagpur and Raipur from this quarter, it said.