Prices of resale apartments drop 10% to 25%

Times of India 14/07/2020

Chennai/Delhi: Madhusudan’s apartment in Velacherry, a southern suburb in Chennai was sold for Rs 88 lakh, when a similar sized one in another block inside the same complex was picked up for Rs 1.10 crore last November. Prices of resale properties across the country are down 10% to 25% as cash strapped owners, most of whom had picked up their second apartment as an investment, try and liquidate.
“Prices appear to have dropped mainly in the resale market, which was expected. The drop is anywhere between 12% to 15%,” said Anuj Puri, chairman of Anarock Property Consultants.

Agrees, Srinivas Anikipatti, senior director at Knight Frank, for Tamil Nadu and Kerala markets, “While there is not much of a fall in primary sales as developers are waiting to see how the post moratorium period is emerge, there is a definite decline in resale prices, in some cases by as much as 25%.
There is huge mismatch in the asking and offer prices of the residential units in the India realty secondary markets resulting into far and few deals getting closed since the lockdown has been lifted on May 18, 2020.

Retail inflation based on consumer price index stood at 6.09% in the month of June, data released by govt on Monday showed. The last recorded CPI number came in March, at 5.84%. Retail inflation numbers for the month of April and May were not released by the government due to insufficient data collection in wake of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

“Real estate prices are on a downward spiral for the past three years,” said Keki Mistry, vice chairman and CEO of country’s largest mortgage lender HDFC.
While centralised or verifiable data is not available, some say the fall is not very steep. According to Magicbricks, the average of the prevailing prices on which deals were closed in the country fell by only 1.5%. The maximum fall of 5.2% in the average price of ready to move in (RTM) apartments is recorded in Hyderabad.

According to 360 Realtor, fall in prices are a bit sharper. The prices in the western suburbs of Mumbai fell by 5.5%, in Thane by 3.6% and central suburbs by 10.1%. But in Pune, 360 Realtor is also suggesting a similar fall — in Wagholi the fall is 0.5%, in Hinjewadi it is 1.8% and PCMC 0.6%. A senior Delhi broker Rajesh Chopra said that there is a huge mismatch between offer and asking price. While buyers are offering 20% discount due to covid pandemic over the March 2020 prices, the seller is not ready to sell at a discount at the moment. Shishir Baijal, CMD, Knight Frank India said, “With the pandemic, we saw a further erosion of buyer sentiments. The lockdown has caused both demand and supply side challenges. Impact of the pandemic can be felt of the pricing in prime residential markets, which are witnessing a moderate reduction in transacted prices in the range of 3% - 6% (year on year) in 2020 in a bid to attract fence sitters to take their purchase decision.’’