COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent nationwide lockdown have led to a fall in housing sales that plunged 67 per cent across the top nine cities during April-June (2020), according to a report by data analytics firm PropEquity.
It further said that the overall housing sales during April-June stood at 21,294 units, down 67 per cent from 64,378 units a year ago.
Property consulting firm Anarock recently published its data that showed an approximate 81 per cent drop in sales at 12,740 units across seven top cities during April-June this year.
Meanwhile, according to PropEquity's report, barring Noida, all other eight major cities - Gurugram, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Thane, Pune, and Kolkata, saw a dip in sales.
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Gurugram saw 79 per cent fall to 361 units for the period under review as compared to 1,707 units in the same period last year.
Housing sales in Chennai and Hyderabad plunged 74 per cent at 996 units and 1,522 units, respectively.
Bengaluru witnessed 73 per cent dip to 2,818 units from 10,583 units, while Kolkata saw 75 per cent decline to 1,046 units from 4,152 units.
In Maharashtra, the sales of residential properties in Mumbai fell 63 per cent to 2,206 units. The demand was down by 56 per cent and 70 per cent in Thane and Pune at 5,999 and 5,169 units, respectively.
However, Noida in the national capital region market bucked the trend to register 5 per cent growth in sales volume to 1,177 units during April-June this year from 1,123 units in the corresponding period of the previous year.
New launches fell 78 per cent to 11,967 units, while unsold inventories were down 5 per cent to 6,07,665 units during the period under review.
Also Read: Housing sales drop 81%, new launches by 98%, in Q2 2020
"These are unprecedented times for the world economy and India is one of the hardest hit countries due to COVID-19. Real estate sector which was slowly coming up by March was hit with a complete halt in construction and sales activities by March last week," PropEquity founder and MD Samir Jasuja said.
He said large developers with low debt leverage will ride out the storm and do reasonably well going forward in the context of the new normal.
"We may witness resizing of units, discounts, amenities and special payment schemes to be offered by developers to create demand, especially during the upcoming festive season," Jasuja said.
P.E. Analytics owns and operates PropEquity, which is an online real estate data and analytics platform covering over 1,18,010 projects of 34,217 developers across over 44 cities.