India's real estate sector expected to see healthy demand in 2022: Report

Demand for office to rise as top IT companies increase hire; flexible spaces to have a good year in 2022, says Knight Frank's '2022 Outlook Report'

Knight Frank India, an international property consultant, on Thursday said in a report that 2022 may prove to be a more stable year for the pandemic-hit sector both for commercial as well as the residential sector.

In its ‘2022 Outlook Report', Knight Frank India said residential segment could see upto 5% rise in values in 2022.

"With physical offices here to stay, portfolio optimization and hybrid working are expected to be the dominant themes going forward driven by incremental demand from IT/ITes firms and the rebond of flexible office operators. For the residential sector further demand revival is expected with strong end-user interest aided by government impetus and incentives by developers ensuring buoyancy. The warehousing segment that has been risk averse during the pandemic will maintain the growth run rate driven by demand from the ecommerce and 3PL players," the report said.

“The real estate sector recorded a smart recovery despite the pandemic exigencies in 2021 with segments like residential outperforming others. The disruption caused by the pandemic is slowing settling and the real estate market is expected to gain back its rhythm in the next two to three quarters, albeit, the threats of the new variant is adequately contained with minimum disruption in the early part of the new year. Should we be able to continue at this pace, the real estate sector will see adequate recovery to match or indeed cross the pre- pandemic levels.” Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director at Knight Frank India said.

The key findings of this report highlights 2022 trends and dynamics across various real estate segments in India.

• Residential segment to witness around 5% capital value growth in 2022. Many of the supply and demand-side factors, assessed over the last decade, have started putting upward pressure on house prices. Residential sales momentum is expected to continue in 2022 as prospective homebuyers’ preferences for bigger homes, better amenities and attractive pricing will keep them interested to seal the deals.

• The Top 5 IT companies’ incremental demand for office space based on robust hiring in the last eighteen months is estimated at 11.67 mn sq ft, spread out over the next one to two years.

• Co-working sector will benefit as pandemic reinforces the need for agility like never before. Agility, a keyword associated with the co-working sector, will drive the demand rebound for flexible office spaces despite the return of normalcy.

• The recovery in the office sector and flight-to-quality trend is expected to keep rents stable to increasing in 2022.

• Transactions for warehousing segment, riding on the boom of the e-commerce sector, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 20% from 31.7 mn sq ft in FY 2021 to 45.9 mn sq ft in FY 2023. E-commerce share in total transactions projected to increase to 36% from 31% during this period

• Indian Data Centre market currently houses an estimated 445 MW of critical IT capacity, and with a significant approx. 290 MW addition in 2022, the total count will scale up to 735 MW by end of next year.

• Mumbai houses approximately 193 MW of India’s current 445 MW data centre capacity. Mumbai’s total capacity is estimated at 1,006 MW with 258 MW under construction and 555 MW in various stages of planning

• Resilience of Indian REITs during the pandemic and growing popularity with retail investors will help pave the way for other commercial real estate REITs.