South Cities Housing Absorption Slumps, Pune And Mumbai Metropolitan Region Race Ahead: Anarock

Unlike earlier, the resilient markets of south India are beginning to feel the heat of the overall residential slowdown in 2019, according to a report.

As per Anarock’s recent research, the southern cities of Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai together saw residential sales decline by five percent in the first three quarters of 2019 against the corresponding period in 2018.

The western cities of Pune and Mumbai Metropolitan Region raced far ahead and clocked in 33 percent jump in sales over the same period, the real estate services company said.

Even National Capital Region in the north recorded 15 percent yearly rise in housing sales between January to September 2019, it said.

The three southern cities collectively saw residential sales of 61,400 units between January and September 2019 as against 64,420 units sold in the first three quarters of 2018.

MMR and Pune, on the contrary, saw the sale of nearly 93,930 units in 2019 against 70,740 units in the corresponding period in 2018.

Concurrently, new launches in the southern cities were also restricted this year and witnessed a mere 3 percent yearly growth from 48,410 units in first three quarters of 2018 to 50,070 units this year.

The western markets of MMR and Pune, on the other hand, saw a 65 percent growth in new supply in a year - from 61,040 units in 2018 to over 1,00,470 units in 2019 (more than double the new supply in the main southern cities).

In NCR, new launches rose by 59 percent in a year from 17,230 units in 2018 to 27,390 units this year.

Amidst declining residential sales and restricted new supply, the southern cities shed unsold stock by 11 percent during the same period, while their western counterparts largely maintained status quo.

As on third quarter of 2019, the southern cities have a combined unsold stock of nearly 1.19 lakh units, which was over 1.34 lakh units in 2018.

MMR and Pune, meanwhile, currently have nearly 3.13 lakh unsold units - almost the same as last year.

This was largely due to the ample new supply added in the market during this year.

Individually, housing sales in Bengaluru saw the maximum drop of 8 percent this year, followed by Hyderabad, which clocked in 4 percent fall.

Chennai, on the other hand, saw residential sales rise by 12 percent during the January to September period in 2019.

Bengaluru saw housing sales of 39,250 units, Hyderabad recorded sale of 13,110 units, while Chennai clocked in sale of 9,040 units in 2019.

In the western region, housing supply in MMR recorded a 35 percent jump in first three quarters of 2019 versus the same period last year.

Nearly 62,550 units were sold this year.

Pune witnessed 28 percent rise in sales from 24,520 units in 2018 to nearly 31,380 units in 2019.

In terms of new supply, both Chennai and Hyderabad recorded yearly drop of 19 percent and 17 percent respectively, with the former seeing new supply of nearly 9,580 units and the latter approximately 11,050 new units in 2019.

Contrary to this, Bengaluru saw its new supply rise by 27 percent in the three quarters of 2019 and stood at 29,440 units.

In west India, Pune saw a whopping 106 percent jump in new residential launches this year from 17,700 units in Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2018 to 36,540 units in the corresponding period in 2019.

Meanwhile, MMR saw its launches jump up to 63,930 units in 2019 from 43,340 units the previous year, increasing by 48 percent on year-on-year basis.

Interestingly, despite the dull performance of the southern markets in terms of overall residential sales and new launches this year, the 11 percent yearly decline in unsold stock in the south region gave developers a reprieve.

"Also, the pile-up of unsold residential stock is far lower in the south than the western region - just 1.19 lakh units in the south against a whopping 3.13 lakh unsold units in the western cities of Pune and MMR", it said.