Housing sales records 40% growth: JLL

In an encouraging development in the realty sector, the residential housing sales across top cities in the country witnessed sharp recovery with both sales and new launches rising with Hyderabad and Kolkata leading the revival race. According to JLL data for the nine-month period ended September sales in residential segment have recorded 40% growth in one year. Business environment for real estate has seen rapid change with series of reforms in the form of demonetization, implementation of Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016, the Goods & Services Tax (GST), Benami Properties (Prevention) Act and the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code. Going by the data for sales and new launches in the January to September period, home buyers are no longer delaying or postponing decisions on buying homes, said country head, JLL India, Ramesh Nair, adding that Hyderabad and Kolkata clocked growth rates of 277% and 230%, respectively. The relatively small residential markets in the two cities also provided a low base effect for the jump in bookings. These were followed by Chennai (77%), NCR (53%), Pune (19%), and Bangalore (12%), the report added.