Considering the high demand momentum seen in the first nine months of the year, including the festive months, housing sales are set to hit an all-time high this year, especially the National Capital Region (NCR) showing great performance .
Housing sales in the NCR and six other key cities of Mumbai Metropolitan Region(MMR), Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad in India , according to leading real estate consultancy, Anarock , may well cross a record of cumulative 3.6 lakh units across all price categories in 2022. This will breach the previous record in 2014 when 3.43 lakh units were sold in the top seven cities.
This optimism comes from the robust home sales and large number of new residential launches seen in the first three quarters of the current calendar year. As many as 2.73 lakh units were sold between January and September 2022. The statistics for new launches are equally impressive . The new launches during the first nine months of 2022, stood at 2.65 lakh. What is really heartening is that both sales figures and new launches figures for the first three quarters of the year surpassed the sales and new launch numbers in the entire pre-covid year of 2019. During 2019, over 2.61 lakh units were sold in the top 7 cities while the new launches were recorded at 2.34 lakh units. The residential sales during the first nine months of the year are also creditable in the backdrop of housing sales plummeting to 1.38 lakh units in 2020 due to pandemic and nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of covid.
From the NCR point of view, what is really promising is that NCR along with MMR have retained their top positions in terms of housing sales during the first nine months of the calendar year 2022. A record number of 1.30 lakh units were cumulatively sold in these two high potential real estate zones in the country. Both NCR and MMR accounted for almost half (48 percent to be precise) of the total sales in the top seven cities.
This impressive performance has been recorded despite contracting affordability due to the rising interest rates. This is because the underlying need for home ownership remains strong. Real estate experts believe that due to the supporting economy and job market, the home buyers sentiment will hold in the coming months, in turn positively impacting the residential demand.