April-June housing sales plunge across cities: Report

As the ongoing pandemic hit the real estate market hard, housing sales across nine major cities in the country declined by 67 per cent to 21,294 units during the April-June quarter of 2020 on a year-on-year basis, according to a PropEquity report.

During the corresponding period of the previous quarter, a total of 64,378 units were sold.

Among the cities, Gurugram witnessed the highest fall in sales of 79 per cent to 361 units during the period under review, down from 1,707 units during April-June last year.

Further, launches during the period across the key cities fell by 78 per cent to 11,967 units on a Y-o-Y basis.

Noida recorded a 100 per cent fall in new launches on a quarter-on-quarter basis as there were no launches at all during the quarter.

Samir Jasuja, founder and managing director at PropEquity, said: "These are unprecedented times for the world economy and India is one of the hardest hit countries due to COVID-19 epidemic. 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."

He noted that larger developers with low debt leverage will ride out the storm and will do reasonably well by Q3 onwards within 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," he said.

Ankush Kaul, President for Sales & Marketing at Ambience Group, said that both Noida and Gurugram have seen significant fall in sales and new supply this year. The pandemic has simply aggravated the already existing problems of builders across the two cities, he said.

He further said: "The current market conditions favour buyers, who may be able to negotiate better and buy across a wide spectrum of ready-to-move-in homes."