Chennai: Sales of housing units in India’s nine key property markets declined 5 per cent year-on-year and new project launches fell 32 per cent during the March quarter. Fewer launches however brought down the unsold housing stock by 10 per cent.
In the March quarter a total of 75,706 housing units were sold as against 79,601 units in the same quarter of last year, as per a report by PropTiger.com. The decline in home sales numbers was largely due to the changes in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) transition rules. The GST Council has given developers time till May 10 to choose between the old tax rates and the new rates to help resolve input tax credit issues. Realtors opting for new GST rates, which are lower than the old rates, will not be able to claim input tax credit.
Despite an overall decline in numbers, home sales in some cities, including Hyderabad, Gurugram, Pune and Mumbai, increased in Q4. While homes sales increased the highest in Hyderabad by 26 per cent, Noida saw sales declining by 50 per cent.
As far as new launches are concerned, most of the cities except Chennai, Pune and Gurugram, saw a decline. Overall new launches declined by 32 per cent to 44,834 units against 66,019 units. Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Mumbai saw the sharpest fall in launches during the quarter. Chennai witnessed launches more than doubling in March quarter.
Fewer launches helped unsold housing stocks shrink by 10 per cent to 8,00,438 units in Q4 FY19 as against 8,90,719 units in Q4 FY18. Apart from Ahmedabad and Chennai, unsold inventory declined in all the other cities. Overall inventory overhang too reduced significantly to 30 months in Q4 FY19 from 39 months in Q4 FY18.
Prices remained almost unchanged in most cities, except Hyderabad, where it went up by 14 per cent.
