Over seven lakh unsold housing units across eight cities: Report

Eight residential market in India have over seven lakh unsold housing units as on June 30, according to a report by PropTiger.com. Inventory overhang, however, has increased to 35 months as against 28 months last year. Inventory overhang is the time developers would take to sell off the unsold stock keeping in view the current sales velocity. At 53 months, the inventory overhang is the highest in the NCR market. The report also notes that nearly 20% of the unsold inventory is in the ready-tomove-in category.

When compared to the levels seen during the same quarter last year, unsold stock declined 13% in the eight cities, primarily on account of a fall in new launches. As on June 30, 2020 developers had an inventory consisting of 738,335 units across these markets. At the end of Q2 2019, the unsold stock stood at 846,460 units. At 56%, the Mumbai and Pune markets together contributed the highest share to this stock of unsold homes, followed by NCR (15%) and Bengaluru (10%). According to the report titled Real Insight: Q2 2020, housing sales in the three months period, with most of these cities in either a partial or full lockdown phase, dipped 79% over the same period last year.

As against 92,764 units in Q2 2019, only 19,038 units were sold during April-June this year. Affordable housing (units priced up to Rs 45 lakh) continued to dominate the real-estate sector accounting for a 44% share of all sales.

“As anticipated, demand was adversely impacted due to economic uncertainty combined with growing unemployment. While, developers are increasingly offering schemes such as flexible payment plans, selective discounts and price protection plans to attract buyers, developers are understandably cautious and are focused on completing existing projects,” said Mani Rangarajan, Group COO, PropTiger.com. Report points that new launches also decreased significantly during this period as developers remained cautious during a period when commercial activity across sectors slowed down. The cities that were covered in the analysis are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi-NCR (Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Faridabad), the MMR (Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane) and Pune.