Real Estate Activity Intensifies In Second Half Of 2021: Proptiger

Real estate activity in India's leading housing markets intensified towards the second half of 2021, after a grim 18 months in which Asia's third-largest economy was consistently battered by multiple waves of the coronavirus pandemic, shows the latest report by Proptiger, the country's leading online real estate brokerage company.

According to the report titled Real Insight Residential - Annual Round-up 2021, home sales in India's eight prime housing markets increased 13% in 2021, when compared to the overall sales in 2020. The figures include the sales numbers for all the four quarters in both calendar years.

A much sharper growth was seen in terms of new supply in 2021 as against 2020---a total of 2.14 lakh units were launched in 2021 compared to 1.22 lakh units in the preceding year, showcasing an upward swing of 75%.

This improvement in key growth metrics for the sector, the second-largest employment generator in India after agriculture, could largely be attributed to support measures launched by the government in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, improved consumer sentiment, stable prices and historically high housing affordability.

Mumbai, Pune steer sales upswing

According to the Proptiger report, builders sold 2,05,936 housing units for the full year 2021 as against 1,82,639 units in 2020. This growth in sales was largely driven by India's financial capital Mumbai, where a total of 58,556 homes were sold in 2021. Closely following the Maximum City was its neighbour Pune, where a 9% jump resulted in sale of 42,425 apartments last year, the report by the Gurgaon-headquartered real estate firm shows.

Inventory overhang declines to 3.5 years

The improvement in sales in 2021 has been instrumental in lowering the inventory burden for India's real estate developers. Consequently, inventory overhang --- the estimated time builders would take to sell off the existing unsold stock, based on the current sales velocity--- has now declined to 42 months. As on December 31, 2021, builders had an unsold stock consisting of 7,26,943 units in India's eight housing markets. While the inventory overhang is the highest for the Delhi-NCR market at 68 months, it is the lowest for Kolkata, at 31 months.