26 pc in housing sales in Gurugram

The  Millennium City seems to be out of favour with home buyers as the housing sales here recorded a 26 per cent decline during the third quarter of this fiscal at 3,711 units due to less supply of affordable flats, a report by property brokerage firm PropTiger said.

However, housing sales increased in Noida by 4 per cent to 4,386 units during October-December quarter of 2018-19 fiscal from 4,225 units in the year-ago period. PropTiger.com, part of Singapore-based Elara Technologies that also owns Housing.com and Makaan.com, Wednesday released its 'Realty Decoded Report' for Q3 of FY'19.

The study covered nine cities — Mumbai, Pune, Noida, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

Overall, sales rose by 30 per cent in nine cities to 73,691 units during October-December quarter of 2018-19 fiscal compared to 56,696 units in the year-ago period. As per the report, a total of 73,691 units were sold in Q3 FY19 in the top nine cities, 8 per cent lower as compared to 79,894 units sold in Q2 FY19. “However, on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, sales improved in all the cities other than Gurugram, which witnessed a slowdown due to non-approval of affordable housing projects,” PropTiger said.

The launches of new homes improved by a mere 3 per cent during the third quarter compared to a year-ago period, primarily due to a 48 per cent drop in supply in Mumbai.  — PTI 

REITs may help generate 14 pc return annually

real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) could offer a return of 14 per cent per annum to domestic and global investors on healthy demand for good quality commercial properties especially office space despite overall slowdown in the real estate market, according to ANAROCK. 

“The listing of India’s first REIT by Blackstone-backed Embassy Group has been in the offing for quite some time, but it now finally appears that it will be listed within the first half of 2019," said Shobhit Agarwal, MD & CEO, ANAROCK Capital.

Agarwal said large foreign institutional investors like Japan's NikkoAm-Straits Trading Asia and US' North Carolina Fund, among others, got SEBI approval to invest in India under REITs. 

The consultant said that the data currently suggests that about 50 per cent of the total office stock in India at over 800 million sq ft could qualify for REITs — a definite improvement over the 30 per cent two years ago.  "Once REITs become an on-ground reality, the market must remain vigilant. There could be a major issue for Indian REITs if the supply of investment-grade office spaces does not keep pace with demand. If it doesn't, we will see an asset bubble form in the short-to-mid-term," he cautioned.      —  PTI