While the Indian realtors have often cribbed on the issue of under representation of the sector in respective budget, they have seldom admitted the fact that the real estate has been a divided house over their wants and needs. Navin M Raheja, MD, Raheja Developers suggests a way out and asserts that tax sops given to real estate will actually increase the government revenue.
Global property consultant Jones Lang LaSalle has cautioned that housing prices in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai have reached the peak level of 2008 and any further rise in the rates will adversely affect the demand. It said the prices in the rest of the country may firm up by about 10-15% next year to touch the 2008 level.
Confusing it may sound, but a project called Delhi One has been launched in Noida by the trend setter of green building concept in India The 3C Company. This mega mixed-use project incorporating residential, commercial, retail and hospitality zones is spread across 12.5 acres at Sector 16-B, Noida.
During the first nine months of 2024, large deals (>200,000 sq ft) accounted for about 40% of the overall demand. Although a vast majority of these larger deals came from 3PL players, Engineering and FMCG segments also saw considerable large-sized deals. At the city level, industrial and warehousing space uptake in Delhi NCR was also driven by large sized deals, a marked deviation from 2023, wherein leasing activity was dominated by small sized deals. Almost 50% of the deals in the first nine months of 2024 were large sized in Delhi NCR.
Average housing prices surged 12% YoY; Delhi NCR saw highest YoY growth. Delhi NCR & Bengaluru saw highest quarterly price rise at 16% & 8% respectively. Unsold inventory continued to drop sequentially amid robust demand. Pune saw the highest dip in unsold inventory followed by Ahmedabad and Chennai. Positive home buyer sentiment and steady demand have kept the momentum strong in residential market across major Indian cities. Average housing prices across the top eight Indian cities witnessed a 3% QoQ growth in Q2 2024. Interestingly, quarterly price movements at India level have been almost similar at about 3% for the last four quarters.
Has housing price surged across India in the last two years? A report says it has surged 20% from 2021 to 2023, led by significant growth in demand. As per the Housing Price Tracker Report by CREDAI – Colliers – Liases Foras major cities like Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Kolkata witnessed about 30% rise in housing prices in two years. Unsold inventory in Delhi NCR dropped the highest during 2021-2023 period, at 19%, followed by Chennai and Pune. Housing prices across top eight cities in India increased 9% YoY in 2023. Track2Realty reports.
What is icing on the cake for the developers in these smaller towns now is the fact that they are getting the labour force at a much lower cost. Explaining this trend, Sandeep Agrawal, a property broker in Patna says that the labours were getting their daily wages in the Delhi NCR region in the range of INR 350-500, depending upon the project. But now they are more than willing to work at INR 250 in places like Patna, Kanpur, Kochi etc where they are stationed in proximity to their home towns and the cost of living is much lesser, compared to the metro cities.
Lockdown is not a new reality for the developers across India, and more particularly in the Delhi NCR region. The NGT construction ban, often for months together, has hampered the execution cycle of the business. However, the comprehensive lockdown due to Coronavirus could multiply the woes of the business with supply chain hurdles leading to cost escalation, labour migration and the job losses in the market leading to standstill sales and even foreclosures. However, Amit Modi, Director of ABA Corp who is also a known face of CREDAI in this part of world thinks otherwise. In an exclusive video conferencing with Ravi Sinha, he feels some of the input costs might come down to clear the material inventory in a competitive market.
First, residential project delay is not a pan-India phenomenon and only limited to major metropolitan cities of Delhi NCR and Mumbai in terms of quantum as well as value of projects. Second, the slowdown in completion of projects is not across the entire spectrum of housing categories but significantly visible in upper-mid and premium categories. What is needed is perhaps a push from the government and funding agencies along with a strict code of conduct among developers which will improve the situation. Going forward, developers should take cognizance of the situation at hand and accordingly realign their marketing strategies so that their launches are in sync with people’s affordability and demand.
Colliers International foresees robust demand from GICs, with leasing by GICs across six major cities in India to be in the range of 32.5 million sq ft between 2019 and 2021. Over 2014-2018, occupiers leased about 53.0 million sq ft of office space in multi-tenanted buildings for their GICs. Bengaluru led the demand with about 20.1 million sq ft, followed by Delhi NCR and Hyderabad. Further, we found that companies from the engineering, energy and manufacturing sectors favoured Bengaluru, which accounted for 32% of GIC demand between 2014-2018.