Realty price spurt shows resounding recovery

In an encouraging trend, housing prices across top 39 cities of India have shown signs of recovery with highest price growth of 9.4% recorded in Lucknow in the just concluded quarter, indicated National Housing Bank’s housing price index NHB RESIDEX in its recent evaluation. National Housing Bank’s Housing Price Index (HPI) for under-construction properties recorded an overall year-on-year increase in 39 cities, decrease in 10 cities and no change in one city. While the index showed increase in 34 cities, decrease in 8 cities and no change in 8 cities on sequential basis. The spurt in prices is in continuation of the previous quarter’s up-trend as in December quarter, prices had recorded an overall increase in 32 cities, decrease in 10 cities and no change in five cities on year-on-year basis. On sequential basis, housing prices had risen in 22 cities, decline in three cities and no change in 22 cities.

As a matter of fact, the top 8 property markets of the country, except Pune, showed growth on annual basis in March quarter, while residential prices rose 8.5% in Kolkata, 5% in Hyderabad, 3.8% in Mumbai, 3.3% in Delhi, 2.3% in Bengaluru, 2.2% in Ahmedabad and 0.7% in Chennai, while Pune saw prices decline 1.4% from a year ago. According to India’s official housing price index, of the 39 cities showing an uptrend in index, significant rise was witnessed in Lucknow at 9.4%, Panvel 8.6%, Kolkata 8.5%, Indore 7.1%, Thane 6.5% and Chandigarh 6.4%. Marginal annual increase in index was witnessed in 3 cities including Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai and Chakan at 0.7% each. The index remained stable in Gandhinagar. Among 10 cities witnessing a fall in index, Patna with 12.2%, Faridabad with 7.1%, Vadodara with 3.5%, Rajkot with 1.8%, Bhopal with 1.7%, Howrah with 1.7%, and Pune with 1.4% observed significant declines, the finding stated.