Rewind 2018: Mixed year for builders, budget housing projects get govt push

Residential sales mainly rebounded in 2018 as developers realigned themselves to the demand for affordable homes and government announced various measures to boost budget housing projects. Private equity investors forming platforms with property developers affirmed the trend. Sale of luxury and premium homes suffered due to high pricing in cities such as Mumbai.
 
On the liquidity front, property developers are facing challenges as refinancing of loans has stopped post the IL&FS issue and non banking finance firms and housing finance companies have slowed loan disbursals’ to property developers to meet their obligations. On the office property side, high demand for offices on the back of economic growth led to good growth in absorption of office spaces in cities.

 
Investors such as Blackstone, Brookfield and Allianz invested billions of dollars in completed office properties. Co-working spaces such as Wework, Co-works leased huge office properties in cities to tap the demand for such spaces. Retail spaces have also seen a revival in absorption due to entry of global brands, consolidation in e-commerce portals and so on.

               

•  Launches of residential projects to go up 68% by the end of 2018 to touch 175,000 units
• Residential sales to go up 47% on a yearly basis and touch 145,000 units
• Kolkata and Hyderabad saw highest growth in residential sales (in first nine months of the year)
•  Office absorption is expected to go up 16% on a yearly basis this year and cross 33 million sq ft
• Next year, office absorption is expected to touch 37.4 million sq ft
• The share of co-working spaces in total office leasing increased to 10% in 2018 from 5% in 201
• The retail property spaces are estimated to witness new completion of 3.1 mn sq ft of space during 2018. 
• Against this,almost 3.9 mn sq ft of space is likely to be absorbed during the year              

                Souce: JLL