Commercial market saved the day
For the NCR realty, the pick up in supply — both in residential and office segments, rise of affordable housing and buyers preference for ready-to-move-in properties marked the year 2018. In the residential segment, according to a Knight Frank study, though developers focused on projects completions, yet new launches gained momentum with a growth of 90 per cent over the same period in 2017. Gurugram contributed 47 per cent to the overall pie with launches in Sector 33, 106, 77 and 65. The new launches in Noida and Greater Noida happened in Greater Noida West and on Noida-Greater Noida eway. Though prices remained muted in 2018, yet the sale pick up was not much. Luxury housing, particularly continued to face slowdown. Luxury homes of Rs 5 crore and more were particularly in low demand. According to industry statistics, this segment had staggering fall of 49 per cent. According to Anarock data, luxury homes unsold stock as on Q3 2018 in top 7 cities, including NCR accounted for 12 per cent of the total unsold stock. This and the overall residential -sale trend was largely due to the fact that in the backdrop of large number of stalled projects, RERA did not provide the anticipated relief to aggrieved home buyers in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh by way of either refunding their money or the completion of stuck/delayed projects. Another factor responsible for not much rise in sales was buyers refraining from buying under-construction properties due to development risks. In the light of this, the trend of ready-to-move homes was dominant during this year as buyers enjoyed the double advantage of safe investment and saving of 12 per cent GST on completed projects with completion/occupation certificate. Office realty which has been experiencing pan-India pick up for quite some time, registered about 3.6 msf of new supply as opposed to 1.8 msf in the same period in 2017. Gurugram witnessed large amount of fresh office supply in its key locations. The NCR market witnessed the increasing trend of pre-commitment transactions, especially in the micro markets of Gurugram.It was not just supply, even leasing activity witnessed pick up. Steady leasing helped bring down vacancy levels in Gurugram’s key office locations of Golf Course Road and Golf Course Extension Road . The growing trend of co-working spaces contributed significantly to leasing in Gurugram, Noida and Greater Noida. Gurugram outperformed other markets to take larger chunk of total transactions pie, registering 28% growth in first half of 2018. In view of this rental values in Noida and Gurugram looked up. Quality office space in micro markets of DLF Cyber City and Golf Course Road, saw rental appreciation of 4-5 per cent.
Tags : News/Views