The trend of buying homes seems to be picking up for the urban residents due to decreased home loan rates and increased affordable housing schemes. Quarter ended in March saw an increase of 21% in the number of people buying homes in top 8 cities of the country.
There were speculation earlier that demonetisation could impact the real estate business badly, however, the recent figures do not show that to be a cause.
The data launched by a known real estate research firm, Liases Foras Real Estate Rating & Research shows that Kolkata was the leading city in terms of increase in the percentage of homes sold in the first quarter. The capital city of West Bengal saw an increase of staggering 47% in number of buyers, followed by 43% in Hyderabad and 30% in Ahmedabad. In the top 8 cities, 61,214 homes were sold in January – March, as compared to 50,788 homes in the quarter before that.
Delhi NCR region saw the most number of sales followed by Mumbai region. A total of 14,983 homes were sold in NCR while 14,505 people bought homes in Mumbai. These 2 cities saw an increase of 24.5% and 23.6% respectively.
Bangalore and Chennai were the two big cities where the number of home buyers dipped down significantly. Bangalore saw a dip of 35%, whereas Chennai saw a dip of 44% in the percentage of home buyers in the first quarter.