'Housing sales up 6 pc, new supply falls 11 pc during Apr-Jun in 9 top cities'

Housing demand went up six percent but supply fell 11 percent during April-June period across nine major cities, according to data analytics firm PropEquity. The nine cities included in the study are Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Thane, and Chennai.

Housing sales increased six percent across the nine cities during April-June 2019 to 61,789 units as against 58,292 units in the year-ago period. New launches came down 11 percent to 51,108 units from 57,425 units, during the period under review.

The upward growth in sales and dip in new launches led to 11 percent decline in unsold housing stocks to 5,89,503 units in June quarter 2019 as against the year-ago period. PropEquity said the Indian real estate market is currently end-user driven and both ready projects and new launches are selling well.

It noted that developers who have launched projects from 2018 onwards have ensured the right ticket price by reducing the size. "We have observed that new launches from reputed developers are receiving an encouraging response from the market. The consolidation and consequent shrinking of the market combined with the developers reducing the unit size to enhance affordability and boost volumes are working together in favor of sales," PropEquity founder and Managing Director Samir Jasuja said.

"Thus absorption levels are going up, which is expected to continue as minimum demand for housing is pre-existing and we expect the demand to climb further," he added. According to the data, housing sales in Bengaluru rose 18 percent to 10,859 units during April-June 2019 as against the year-ago period.

Noida saw a 16 percent rise in demand at 1,193 units. Sales in Chennai went up 15 percent to 4,687 units, while Pune witnessed a 13 percent rise in sales at 16,025 units.

Mumbai and Gurugram saw 8 percent rise in demand to 6,125 units and 2,378 units, respectively. Housing sales in Thane rose marginally by 2 percent to 13,656 units.

However, sales were down in Hyderabad by 11 percent at 4,219 units. Kolkata saw a 14 percent fall in demand at 2,647 units. PropEquity is an online subscription-based real estate data and analytics platform covering over 1,11,048 projects of 31,056 developers across 44 cities in India.