Coronavirus impact: Home sales drop 42% in March quarter, says Anarock

Bearing the brunt of COVID-19 pandemic, sales of residential units saw a 42 per cent year-on-year (YoY) drop in the first quarter of the calendar year 2020, said a new report.

In Q1 2020, residential sales in the top seven cities stood at 45,200 units, against 78,510 units a year ago, according to Anarock Property Consultants. On quarter on quarter (Q-o-Q) basis, housing sales fell by 24 per cent.

The National Capital Region (NCR), Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Bengaluru and Pune have accounted for 84 per cent of the sales in the first quarter of the year.

As compared to the previous year, housing sales in MMR declined by 42 per cent and by 41 per cent in NCR. Sales in Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad decreased by 23 per cent.

On yearly basis, the decline in the three major IT hubs stood at 45 per cent, 42 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively, Anarock said. Chennai saw sales of 2,190 units, a decline of 21 per cent over Q4 2019, and by 36 per cent annually (since Q1 2019).

Meanwhile, new launches too fell by 42 per cent annually - from 70,480 units in Q1 2019 to around 41,200 in Q1 2020. On a quarterly basis, supply also declined by about 21 per cent. Yearly trends indicate that MMR and Pune recorded the maximum y-o-y drop of housing supply - by 61 per cent and 56 per cent respectively - while Chennai and Kolkata actually displayed positive trends with nearly 16 per cent and 8 per cent yearly rise.