Realtors like Tata Housing, Godrej Properties shower discounts, freebies to push home sales

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI/BENGALURU: Real estate developers have latched on to the auspicious occasion of Chaitra Navratri in north India, Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra and Ugadi in south India starting on Saturday to offer spot discounts and freebies in addition to deferred payment plans and other schemes that have already been in place to push sales.

Richa Realtors in Mumbai and Avalon Group in Delhi are offering spot discounts of up to Rs 5 lakh in some of their projects. Tata Housing Development Company and Godrej Properties, on the other hand, are focusing on the 30:70 payment plans to attract buyers to their projects in Bengaluru and Mumbai respectively.

While Omkar Realtors & Developers and Olympeo Infrastructure in Mumbai and Mahagun Group in Delhi are offering gold coins on home purchases, Bengaluru-based Ozone Group is offering a lower down payment of 10% for Ozone Urbana in the city.

That’s not all. Supertech is offering a three-bedroom apartment at a price of a two-bedroom unit at one of its projects in Greater Noida during Navratras.

The offers come after home sales plunged 17 per cent in top six markets in 2014 and the inventory level rose to 647,484 units, according to property consultant Knight Frank India, leaving the developers with a severe liquidity crunch.

Experts say this is a win-win situation for buyers and developers.

"No one will get better pricing levels than that exist today, and to top it all if the buyers are getting more discounts or an added freebie, it’s an icing on the cake," said Mudassir Zaidi, national director (residential services), Knight Frank India.

Developers are also upbeat about the prospects this festive season.

"This is a good way to clear inventory for us," said RK Arora, chairman and managing director of Supertech.

Sandeep Ahuja, CEO of Richa Realtors reasoned, "A lot of prospective buyers are sitting on sidelines and they need a trigger to finalise their decisions."
The low down payment plan offered by the Ozone Group will help more people afford property, said the company’s CEO Srinivasan Gopalan.