Home sales rose 23 per cent across top seven cities in the country during the first five months of 2021. However, Calcutta witnessed a decline of 11 per cent during the same period, a report released by PropEquity showed.

The research and analytics firm said home sales in Calcutta declined to 4,673 units between January and April 2021 from 5,267 units a year ago. One of the reasons behind this fall was that launches fell by 28 per cent to 2,391 units against 3339 last year.

Apart from Calcutta, the National Capital Region also saw a slump of 20 per cent as it faced a major brunt of the second Covid-19 wave.

However, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai Metropolitan Region and Pune witnessed a growth in home sales in the first five months of 2021 over last year. Sales in Bangalore were up 16 per cent, while Chennai recorded a 40 per cent growth in sales. Hyderabad house sales rose 39 per cent, while those in Mumbai rose 29 per cent and in Pune 34 per cent.

Cumulatively, home sales rose 23 per cent across the top seven cities to 1,32,818 units against 1,08,199 units in the first five months of 2020. Majority of the sales happened till April 15, PropEquity added.

“India witnessed the worst of the Covid wave in April and May, which drastically stopped almost all real estate activity. The worst is behind us... We expect home sales to bounce back faster as the recovery has been at a rapid pace,’’ Samir Jasuja, founder and managing director of PropEquity, said.

“Business is picking up...We expect sales to improve in the next quarter for projects by fundamentally strong developers,’’ said Ankush Kaul, president (sales & marketing) of Ambience Group.