Previous year trends suggest that housing sales across top cities in festive quarter (Oct.-Dec.) mostly saw an uptick – anywhere between 5% and 10% – over the preceding quarter. This is largely because the festive season is considered most auspicious for property buying in India and developers also roll out various schemes and offers to fuel the fervour.

As per recent reports by real estate consultants, Delhi NCR cities expect jump between 27-31% in sales in the festive season. As many as 5,200 units were sold in Q3 2020 in NCR.

The years 2016 and 2017 were a marked contrast – festive quarter sales in these years actually reduced against the preceding quarter, mainly because of structural reforms including Demo, RERA and GST. This year, the top 7 cities can cumulatively witness a 35% jump in housing sales in the ongoing festive quarter (Oct.-Dec.) against the July to September period.

Despite spiralling COVID-19 cases in the second quarter of 2020, residential sales rose significantly. This provides sufficient reason to expect a significant increase during the upcoming festive season, which will prompt many fence-sitters to avail the best deals on offer. Developers have pulled out all the stops to attract buyers, announcing schemes for festive season – many of which result in an actual reduction in the cost of acquisition.

Director of GLS group, Surinder Singh said “We have seen good response in our affordable housing projects in Gurgaon and Sohna. Having seen the demand increasing, we plan to launch more affordable projects in near future and offer homes to the working population of Gurgaon and adjoining cities”. He said the demand for affordable houses will increase as most of the population is looking for houses under Rs 45 lakhs. 

These offers come with an expiry date – when the housing market regains enough momentum, they will be withdrawn. Most end-users will aim to use this period to their advantage. The prevailing lowest-best home loan interest rates coupled with limited-period government incentives such as reduced stamp duty and registration charges in markets like MMR are added flavours to the festive treat.

Moreover, the Q3 2020 base period saw nearly 29,520 units sold across the top 7 cities – much lower than the pre-COVID-19 quarter (Q1 2020) which saw nearly 45,200 homes sold. This effectively results in larger scope for growth. In all, housing sales are all set to rebound to 90% of the pre-COVID-19 levels (Q1 2020).

Image by Ankita Gkd from Pixabay