Mumbai: Buyers looking for affordable property in an otherwise expensive market like the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) have a reason to cheer this festive season, as the data trends by Proptiger.com suggest that a large part of the ready-to-move-in unsold stock in this property market are units priced within Rs 45-lakh budget. A recent data released by Proptiger.com, owned by Elara Technologies Pte Ltd, that also owns Housing.com, Makaan.com and FastFox.com, showcases that developers had an unsold stock of over 2.93 lakh units till July 2019. Of these, over 1.41 lakh units (over 48 per cent of the stock) are priced within Rs 45 lakh.
In order to boost demand in the affordable housing segment, the government has taken several landmark decisions in the recent past. Apart from increasing the tax deduction limit to Rs 3.50 lakh on the interest component of home loans taken for the purchase of units priced within Rs 45 lakh, the government has also unveiled its plans to relax external commercial borrowing norms to boost demand in this segment.
While lending rates are already at record low with the banking regulator Reserve Bank of India reducing the repo rate to a nine-year low of 5.40 percent this year, the government plans to offer even lower rates to government employees to provide impetus to the overall economy by way of triggering growth in the second-biggest employment generating sector in the country.
Mani Rangarajan, Group Chief Operating Officer, Housing.com, PropTiger.com, Makaan.com, and FastFox.com said, “We expect home sales to see a remarkable improvement in the MMR this festive season. While the government has launched a slew of measures to make purchases of affordable homes quite lucrative, easy availability of ready-to-move-in homes in this category only makes it more convenient for buyers. We are certain that property seekers who had put their purchase plans on hold, due to monetary constraints, would make good use of the low interest regime now.”
The government has also launched the Rs 20,000-crore stress fund recently for the real estate sector, which would particularly benefit stuck affordable housing projects that could soon be finished through last-mile liquidity support.
Majority of the unsold stock in the MMR is concentrated in Thane West, Dombivali, Neral, Mira Road, Panvel, Virar and Chembur. While the largest number of 2BHK and 3BHK homes are available in Thane West (13,766 and 4,306 units, respectively), Neral has the biggest concentration of 1BHK homes (8,599 homes), a widely popular choice among Mumbai property buyers.
Data also shows a total of 59,042 units were delivered in the first half of 2019, the highest number of housing delivery recorded in the first half of a year since 2014. Nearly 41 percent of this stock (24,188 units) was housing units priced within Rs 45 lakh.
A total of 26,400 units were launched in the MMR in the first six months of this year while 54,213 homes were sold during the same period, as per the data. Majority of the units launched and sold during this period were affordable homes. While 44 percent of newly launched units were priced below Rs 45 lakh, the same is true for half of the homes that were sold between January and June this year.
