Housing sales, supply see steep fall in December quarter

The ongoing quarter is proving to be not so good for the residential real estate sector with both new supply and absorption seeing a fall. Data indicates that new housing supply has fallen by a third on year and sales by over a fifth across the top nine cities of India.

In Q4 of 2024 so far 85,765 new housing units have come into the market, compared to 1.28 lakh units year ago, a decrease of 33 per cent, according to data provided by real estate data analytics firm PropEquity.

Home sales in the quarter has fallen 21 per cent to a little over 1 lakh units compared to around 1.4 lakh units year ago. The data shows that the drop has been across all cities, with the sole exception of Delhi-National Capital Region, which bucked the trend on both aspects.

The cities that have been surveyed are Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR , Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Pune.

Sales across the nine cities have risen 5 per cent on the quarter and launches 7 per cent.

Sales slowdown

The drop in sales ranges from 9 to 47 per cent, with Chennai seeing the least drop and Hyderabad the most.

In recent months Hyderabad has been seeing a slowdown in the sales volume of premium homes, that accounted for a good portion of the demand. In the quarter under review around 12,682 housing units were sold in the city compared to around 24,044 units year ago. In the September quarter also the city saw an over 20 per cent dip in sales volume, pointing to a longer trend of tapering sales momentum.

Prices in the city have risen sharply over the last year or so putting homes out of reach for many. According to Anarock, the average ticket price in the city in the first half of FY25 increased to ₹1.15 crore from ₹84 lakh in the first half of FY24.

In Chennai sales have dipped 9 per cent y-o-y and 10 per cent q-o-q, according to the data. Sales in Mumbai, that accounts for close to half of the total residential market in the country by value, fell 27 per cent to just over 10,000 units.

The sole exception in the list, Delhi-NCR, saw sales rising 25 per cent on year and 20 per cent q-o-q to 12,915 units.

Supply drop

The drop in new supply ranges from 11 to 52 per cent, with Bengaluru seeing the least drop and Hyderabad again showing the most drop.

In Bengaluru, the quarter under review has seen nearly 14,511 new housing units coming up compared to 16,364  units year ago.

Bengaluru has been a strong residential market, due to demand from the high-income earning IT professionals. A disturbing data point is that the city has also seen a 22 per cent decline in launches sequentially – from the September quarter – indicating an overall downward trend.

In Chennai new supply has fallen 17 per cent on year and 32 per cent on the quarter to 3196 units, pointing to weakness in the market.

Mumbai, saw a new supply fall 25 per cent on year and 10 per cent sequentially to 7234 units.