Gujarat Real Estate Project Registrations at Record Low

Covid-19 and the disruptions induced by the pandemic hampered the registration of new real estate projects across the state. Real estate developers in all the four major cities — Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot — registered fewer projects with the Gujarat Real Estate Regulatory Authority (GujRERA) in fiscal 2020-21. The number of real estate projects — residential, commercial, mixed development and plotted schemes — registered with GujRERA declined by 22.8% to 1,346 in 2020-21 from 1,745 projects in 2019-20, shows data available on the website of the state real estate regulator. The total investment proposed through these projects also plummeted by 28% to Rs 32,674 crore in 2020-21 as compared to Rs 45,490 crore in 2019-20. Real estate players attribute the drop in project registrations to the Covid-19 pandemic and the uncertainties induced by it. "The nationwide lockdown last year eroded the first quarter (April-June) of fiscal 2021 as the real estate market had come to a standstill. The first half of the second quarter ending September was also sluggish in terms of demand. Again, there was a spike in cases soon after Diwali. This resulted in wastage of five months for the real estate market, which adversely affected project registrations by developers," said Dipak Patel, past president, CREDAI Ahmedabad-GIHED, a body of Ahmedabad based real estate developers. Echoing similar views, builders in Vadodara, too, maintained that the pandemic, of course, had a big role to play in the declining project registrations. "The builders were ready with their projects and wanted to get them registered. But the Covid suddenly brought uncertainty to the real estate market over the last one year. Builders were unsure if people would be keen to invest in new property amid the pandemic that was wreaking havoc not just in the economy but also people’s lives.