New home launches rose 46 percent during the January-June period in eight major cities with Mumbai, Pune and Delhi-NCR leading the way, said Knight Frank India in its half-yearly report.
The financial capital, Mumbai, surged with the highest 128 percent year-on-year growth, followed by Pune and Delhi-NCR which saw fresh launches at over 75 percent. The other cities with launches of new homes are Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The number of new inventories swelled to 91,739, compared with 62,738 units in the year-ago period.
Despite fall in prices, increased launches and government reforms, housing sales in eight cities rose only marginally at three percent in the first six months of 2018. While the sale of houses surged up to the highest level of about 1.24 lakh units, the unsold inventory level went down by 17 per cent to 4,97,289 units, said the report.
"Both sales and launches have grown over the past 18 months and are at their highest level since the demonetisation period at approximately 1,24,000 and 92,000 units respectively," the report said.
Knight Frank India's data showed a year-on-year comparison of housing sales for the first half of the year. According to the report, the sales of houses in Delhi-NCR increased by five percent to 18,047 units, as against the year-ago period.
The centre of India's high-tech industry Bengaluru's housing sales rose maximum by 22 percent at 25,802 units, while Hyderabad rose by five percent to 8,313 units. Ahmedabad and Mumbai also saw a marginal increase of three percent and one percent, respectively.
However, the housing sales in Kolkata, Pune and Chennai dipped by 19 percent, six percent and three percent, respectively. While sales in Kolkata dropped to 6,591 units, Pune and Chennai witnessed the fall to 16,451 units and 8,585 units, respectively.
"Effective price drop of 10-15 percent continues in cities like Mumbai, NCR, Pune and Kolkata. Hyderabad bucks the trend with an exceptional price growth at eight percent year-on-year," said Mudassir Zaidi, the Executive Director (North) of Knight Frank India.
