Real estate prices show some signs of recovery

NEW DELHI: Real estate prices have shown some improvement in majority of cities such as Mumbai where index of prices went up by 3.7%, Gurgaon by 6.7%, Chandigarh (6.2%), Kanpur 8.1% and Bhubaneshwar by 11.7%, among others in the January-March 2017 quarter. This was revealed in prices of residential units released on Monday by the National Housing Bank (NHB). According to NHB, out of 50 cities which are monitored, 27 witnessed improvement in prices in the quarter ending March 2017 as against that of December 2016.

Prices remained flat in cities such as Noida, Greater Noida, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad where the movement in the Residex is around 1%-2% in the January-March quarter over the previous quarter. But 19 out of 50 cities witnessed fall in index of property prices. In Delhi, it fell by 4.3%, Gandhinagar by 12%, Surat (8.9%), Ludhiana (7.8%) and Kolkata by 7.2% “I will be happy if land prices fall further. We still have the situation where land prices in Vijayawada is more than Washington and New York. Unfortunately , farmers are not benefitted by this price rise as the middleman had already bought the land from farmers and now quoting unreasonably high prices,“ said Venkaiah Naidu, minister for housing and urban affairs, who released the index, said.

In the under construction segment, prices went up in 24 cities out of 47 cities which were monitored in the quarter ended March 2017 over that of December 2016. The maximum increase was observed in 7 ctiies like Jaipur (8.7%), Chennai (6.7%), Lucknow (5.7%), Guwahati (5.2%), Howrah (4.4%), Hyderabad (4.4%) and Bidhan Nagar (4.1%). 14 cities have shown decline in prices over the previous quarter with maximum fall observed in Patna (16.2%), Nashik (6.3%). Delhi (4.3%) Faridabad (3.9%) and Chandigarh (3.4%).

The index for prices of under construction project in Noida, Greater Noida, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad remained flat. NHB Residex plans to bring out Land Price Indices, Building Material Price Indices and Housing Rental Index to enable consumers to have comprehensive view on housing, said Sriram Kalyanaraman, MD & CEO, NHB. He said they are planning to include 100 cities from 50 cities now.