The sale of residential apartments in Calcutta appears to have regained the momentum seen before the onset of the pandemic, two separate reports published by brokerages suggest.

More apartments are expected to be sold during the January-March quarter — which will come to a close in less then a week — compared with the same period of 2020, a quarter marked by disruption caused by the lockdown.

Anarock, which specialises in the residential market, reckoned 2,680 units were sold in Calcutta during the period, higher than 2,440 recorded in the same period of last year.

JLL, which limits its coverage area to the core city, also noted that sales in this quarter were 105 per cent of the same period of last fiscal. It also found out that there has been an improvement in home sales every quarter since the lockdown was lifted.

The report pointed out that the off-take of residential units in the January-March period of 2021 was driven by south suburbs (Joka, Kasba, Behala, Jadavpur, Tollygunj) and east suburbs (EM Bypass, Rajarhat, Topsia) with a combined contribution of over 70 per cent.

Saket Mohta, managing director of Merlin Group, said: “My experience is also quite the same. Now, the numbers are more or less better than pre-Covid and (from) post lockdown there is a surge in sales.”
He said there is a high demand for projects where customers can move in readily, adding that the uptick is being witnessed from October 2020.

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Even as the two reports agreed that there is a perceptible recovery in home sales post lockdown, they differed on the extent and the pace of it.

Anarock claimed that 58,290 units were sold between January and March in the seven major cities of the country, which is 29 per cent higher than the same period of 2020 — which included a week of complete lockdown.

JLL, however, claimed that housing sales are yet to breach the pre-Covid level, even though it was pretty close to doing so. They noted that the sales during January-March are at 93 per cent of last fiscal.
“The sustained growth in sales presents clear signs of demand and buyer confidence coming back to the market. This has been on the back of a historically low home loan interest rate, stagnant residential prices, lucrative payment plans and freebies from developers and government incentives such as the reduction of stamp duty in states like Maharashtra and Karnataka (for affordable housing),” Samantak Das, chief economist of JLL and head research and REIS of JLL, said.