Overall State Of Real Estate Is Good
Sushil Mohta, President, CREDAI West Bengal and Chairman, Merlin Group Post pandemic the developers were quite apprehensive about collections from their sold inventory or selling of unsold inventory and as such all the developers were focusing on their ongoing projects. Nobody was willing to launch new projects. It has helped clearing of existing inventory. The prices of residential as well as commercial real estate have been stagnant for the last five years. But the cost has gone up 5% here. Actually the developers were selling the existing inventory hardly with any margin. That is also a reason for new projects not being launched. The silver lining is that December has seen an increase in price by five percent and I am expecting that by March further increase of 10% will happen. Therefore, there will be some incentives for the developers to launch new projects and I am sure that from March, April we will see launches of a few more projects and new inventory will come. The lowest rate of home loan coupled with old price levels – both have helped in achieving good sales figures. In fact, the sales have been good since October in Calcutta. And the real estate industry had already reached pre covid levels in Nov/Dec. I think the first three months will also be good as far as sales are concerned. The prices have to increase now by 10% more. The total increase in prices will be 15% on an average in residential real estate. Presently the situation is very healthy. The demand in warehousing and logistic is there. The demand for second home is also increasing. The footfalls in malls are back. I think the new leasing will also start happening of the retail space from Feb/ March. If no second or third wave of covid strikes us, overall state of real estate is good and we will be better than pre covid level.
Tags : Interviews Developers Real Estate Merlin Group Sushil Mohta covid19 CREDAI West Bengal