Advantage Home-Ownership!
Home-ownership has now become the new focus for prospective homebuyers in the delhi ncr, as well as across the country, in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic .
This trend has also resulted in improvements of property sales across key real estate markets.
Real estate developers say that there has been a significant inclination to-wards home-ownership with more and more people desirous of having their own house, owing to work-from-home trends and the hesitation of property owners in letting their premises on rent to strangers.
Vikas Garg, deputy managing director of MRG World, says: “The second wave has had a profound impact on the real estate buyers’ sentiment. Unlike the first wave, prospective buyers have became more inclined towards real estate assets this time due to the promise of stability. Asa result, home-ownership sentiment reached a peak, which will help real estate sector recover faster.”
As per an ICRA note, the recent improvement in real estate market was primarily driven by a gradual un-locking of the economy, pent-up demand, and improved affordability on the back of reduced home loan rates and attractive payment schemes and discounts.
Shubham Jain, senior vice-president and group head at ICRA, says: “An increasing focus on home-ownership, both from domicile residents and the NRIs, has been aiding sales. Reverse migration has further supported an increase in housing demand in Tier 2 and 3 cities. Notably, increasing digitization has played a key role in enabling sales in the current environment, with extensive use of digital marketing and digital engagement tools by developers aiding online home sales and payments. The crisis has thus pushed the sector towards widespread technology integration.”
Buyer preferences for rightly priced inventory at advanced stages of construction continued to be in place, although larger-for-mat units seemed to be finding increasing favour, possibly due to the requirement for dedicated work and study areas.
“Developers with adequate balance sheet strength, available liquidity, financial flexibility, refinancing ability, and a well-diversified project portfolio are expected to be better positioned during this crisis. Consequently, the trend of market consolidation is likely to accelerate, with range-bound prices and low home loan rates expected to continue supporting sales for established players,” Jain says.
With the pandemic mostly hitting migrants, buying own house becomes an utmost necessity for most property seekers. Many migrants in India and NRI buyers who have faced some kind of stigma due to the ongoing pandemic are tending to shift their focus towards buying a property in their own name. —Ravi Kumar Diwaker, Magicbricks Bureau