In a clear indication of resounding recovery in real estate across country's top seven cities, residential property sales have recorded 25% growth in the first six months of the current year, concluded a joint report by realtors' body CREDAI and JLL India. Housing sales stood at 64,080 units during January-June 2018 against 51,452 units in the year-ago period. Following demonetization, sales had remained sluggish, but the latest half-yearly figures show that things are looking up. All cities have shown positive growth, said Ramesh Nair, JLL India CEO . Sluggishness in housing sales, which continued for the past 3-4 years, is over now. He believes that the fence sitters have now come back to the market with flats becoming affordable after effective price and time correction. CREDAI's president Jaxay Shah said the housing market is recovering post demonetization, Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) and goods and services tax that had affected sales. He also insisted that the GST rate needs to be brought down from the current 12% to boost sales of under-construction homes. The seven cities tracked by CREDAI-JLL are NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune. The report was released at CREDAI's 18th annual international convention held recently was attended by over 1,000 developers from across India.
