The rebate on stamp duty announced by the Bengal government, if equally matched by developers by way of discount, could boost the sales of residential properties in Calcutta, experts feel.

Bengal has reduced stamp duty by 2 per cent and cut circle rate — a government pre-decided rate at which a property must be registered in a given location — by 10 per cent in its budget in July.

When a similar announcement was made in Maharashtra in September, many developers extended a matching rebate to make a transaction ‘free’ of stamp duty payment altogether. The end result was record breaking sales and launches.

Mumbai and Pune were the top two markets for the launch of projects and sale of apartments in India in the first six months of 2021. Most of it took place during the January-March period when the 2 per cent stamp duty rebate was effective. The last quarter of 2020-21 had a better sales volume when the rebate was 3 per cent.

“Developers took steps to make it a lucrative proposition in Maharashtra,” said Shishir Baijal, chairman and managing director of Knight Frank India.

Bengal became the third major state after Maharashtra and Karnataka to provide a fiscal incentive by way of a stamp duty reduction. While Maharashtra, like Bengal, announced an across-the-board reduction irrespective of the price point, Karnataka kept the sop limited to the affordable segment (up to Rs 45 lakh).

Baijal argued that the Calcutta market is more likely to go the Mumbai way than Bangalore where the response was mild.

In H1 2021, Calcutta witnessed sales of 5,115 residential units, a 74 per cent YoY increase over H1 2020. This is largely on account of the lower base of H1 2020 due to the washout quarter of Q2 2020 during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the uptick seen from the third quarter of 2020 got moderated in the Q2 of 2021.

Harshvardhan Neotia, chairman and managing director of Ambuja Realty, said matching cuts like Mumbai, if any, will be on a case to case basis. “The sops will encourage those who have bought a property but did not register it. It will also prompt the fence-sitters to decide by October, when the rebate window closes,” he said.

Sushil Mohta, chairman of Merlin Group and president of Credai Bengal, said unsold inventory in Calcutta is much less than Mumbai, suggesting less pressure on developers to sale at a discount. “Mumbai operates with higher margins. I do not see many opting for a matching cut,” he said.