Decade High: Mumbai sees record property registrations in July, say Knight Frank India Data

Real estate markets are booming, especially in the metro cities. Knight Frank India – a real estate consulting firm in India pointed out that Mumbai (MCGM region) recorded 9,037 property registrations in July 2021. This is the highest number over last one decade. Compared to previous month this is 15% more number of deals. And compared to pre-pandemic month of July 2019, the number stood 57% higher.

To add to rejoice of the developers, the new property sales are catching up. 53% of registrations in July 2021 were of new sales in that particular month, compared to 42% in June, 29% in May and 7% in April 2021. As soon as the lockdown restrictions were eased, customer site visits were facilitated, and transactions were closed. The July numbers do have some pent-up demand from the preceding quarter.

Shishir Baijal, Chairman & Managing Director, Knight Frank India said, “As the economy revives and the lockdown restrictions ease further, with the increase in pace of vaccinations, we expect this momentum to sustain provided we avoid third wave.” The fact that new registrations for the month of July has also shown an encourage increase over last few months also bears testimony to the fact that demand for new homes remains intact, he adds.

Home prices have not gone up much over last couple of years. Some of the early deals in CY2020 were priced in destress. However, over last two quarters the developers have gone slowly on offering discounts and special packages. The non-resident Indians coming back to India in the background of covid19 pandemic worldwide, have opted to buy houses in metro cities for self-consumption and for investments. Low rate of interest has also helped the demand for houses. Less number of launches compared to pre-pandemic period have further controlled the supply of housing units. Relatively less leveraged balance sheets of large developers have ensured that they have better holding capacity and hence better price discipline in the housing market.