Will 2021 be a turning point for India’s real estate sector?

As the sector gears up to enter another phase in 2021 with the arrival of the Corona virus vaccine, it will have to realign itself with buyers’ new expectations

File photo
File photo

India’s reality might not have been what mathematical statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb terms as a ‘black swan-robust society’. The Indian economy started to show signs of crumbling, in the aftermath of the unprecedented challenges caused by the Coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. The COVID-19 virus outbreak had a shattering impact on India’s economy in general and its real estate sector, in particular – an area of work that requires human contact inherently

However, to overcome the overwhelming effects of the pandemic, all stakeholders in India’s realty sector, which happens to be the biggest employment-generating sector in India after agriculture, came together to try and restore normalcy

What will be the crucial learnings from 2020 for the real estate sector in the year 2021? Watch our webinar on Housing.com, moderated by Jhumur Ghosh (editor-in-chief of Housing.com News), with industry experts including Manan Shah (MD, MICL Group), Anuj Goradia (MD, Dosti Realty), Samyag Shah (director, Marathon Realty), Rushank Shah (promoter, Hubtown Ltd) and Chintan Sheth (director, Ashwin Sheth Group)

2020: When Indian real estate changed for the better

While 2020 will be remembered for the Coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns, India’s real estate sector, especially that of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), will remember it for the economic turnaround and demand revival, says Kaushal Agarwal, chairman, The Guardians Real Estate Advisory.

“After the announcement of the nationwide lockdown, it was extensively predicted that this will be the year of real estate’s greatest fall. The outcome was quite the opposite, with November 2020 recording the highest number of residential registrations in almost a decade (In Maharashtra),” says Agarwal, adding that such an unprecedented and unimaginable recovery was possible, owing to Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) decision to reduce the repo rates and state governments reducing the stamp duty.

According to Mohit Goel, CEO, Omaxe, the positives that have emerged from the COVID-19 crisis will form the cornerstone of growth in the realty sector and overall Indian economy in the coming decades

According to CBRE data, housing sales in the July-September 2020 quarter increased by a strong 86% on a quarterly basis. As against 12,000 units in Q2 2020, 22,000 homes were sold in the top seven cities in Q3 2020. A strong policy support though last-mile funding mechanisms provided by the government for delayed housing projects, low mortgage rates, reduction in stamp duty and property registration fee in a few states, along with incentives and attractive payment schemes offered by developers, have helped in boosting stakeholder sentiments, which, points out Magazine, has strengthened the confidence levels of end-users and fence-sitters.

Among the many learning the pandemic imparted to the sector, is embracing the digital mediums. In fact, if not for those, it would have been nearly impossible for the sector to see any sales, whatsoever. “The year saw a growing thrust towards digitisation and technology adoption, chronicling a new era in the industry. There has been a significant rise in digital launches, virtual property events, online listing and viewing, data analytics, cloud-based services and much more. The traditional O2O (online to offline) model is now recalibrating, with digital mediums now playing a much bigger role,” says Ankit Kansal, co-founder and MD, 360 Realtors

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