Mumbai : A majority of potential homebuyers expect housing prices to rise over the next six months led by higher input costs, as per a joint survey by Housing.com and National Real Estate Development Council.
Therefore, the potential buyers are looking for flexible payment plans along with discounts while deciding on making purchases of their dream homes, the survey revealed.
Digital real estate platform Housing.com along with leading industry body Naredco has conducted a survey of more than 3,000 people to gauge consumer sentiments for the first half of 2022 calendar year.
Also, the survey titled ‘Residential Realty Consumer Sentiment Outlook (January—June 2022) showed 47 per cent of the consumers prefer to invest in real estate, which is highest compared to other asset classes such as stocks, gold, and fixed deposits.
In the survey for the H2 of 2020, only 35 per cent respondents showed interest in buying real estate, it said.
The COVID pandemic has reinforced the need for owning a house for every individual. People want bigger and better homes. Our data showed that housing sales rose 13 per cent in 2021 with revival in demand. We strongly believe sales will cross pre-COVID levels this year, said Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO of Housing.com.
Meanwhile, another report said, ‘The real estate sector is in rising demand post-covid-19. Although the pandemic affected the residential market in the intial months last year, there has been an improvement in the affordable housing segment reflecting the economic recovery in the real estate sector.
This pandemic has brought about a change, a shift in the buying sentiment, that has opened a new era of investing in the mid and affordable residential segment. This is because many people have realized the significance of owning a home, which has led to an upsurge in the demand for affordable housing, in the post covid world.
It has been observed that the sales for new homes in the Mumbai region in October 2020 were 1.3 times higher as compared to January 2020 sales.
This was when the Maharashtra Government reduced the stamp duty from 5% to 2% till December 2020. The gradual rise in property prices seen after being badly impacted due to the pandemic shows the increasing buyer’s interest in real estate.
The top metro cities also witnessed housing sales of approximately 29,520 units in Q3 2020, as against 45,200 units in the pre-covid-19 quarter of Q1 2020 of which Mumbai observed maximum sales of 9,200 units.
Moreover, with the Government’s initiative of housing for all scheme, 60 million houses are going to be built, of which 20 million will be built in the urban areas and 40 million in the rural areas. A major chunk of people demanding premium houses have now moved to the affordable segment post the pandemic.
Hence, the demand for affordable housing is on a rise and estimated to increase as things normalise.’