By Sanjeev Sharma
New Delhi, Jan 31 (IANS): While house transactions mostly declined during the COVID-19 shocks, their prices did not fall in most of the selected cities, some even increased, as per Economic Survey 2021-22.
Further, decline in housing transactions have also been much less during second COVID-19 wave than the decline during first COVID-19 wave.
During first COVID-19 wave housing transactions declined in almost all selected cities. However, during second wave of COVID-19, the housing transactions in many cities such as Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Noida, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru increased relative to the pre-pandemic levels.
In cities such as Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Ranchi, Delhi & Kolkata, the housing transactions declined during second COVID-19 wave over the pre-pandemic levels. However, this decline has been much less than the decline during the first COVID-19 wave.
Unlike the decline in quarterly housing transactions during first and second COVID-19 waves, the impact of the COVID-19 shock on the prices of residential properties was not uniform across the cities.
During the first COVID-19 wave, the housing prices increased in cities such as Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Thane, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune and Bengaluru over the pre-pandemic level, and the housing prices decreased in Delhi, Noida and Ranchi.
Similar trends were also visible during the second COVID-19 wave over the pre-pandemic level. The housing prices in cities such as Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar and Ranchi continued to increase despite the COVID-19 shocks.
Between two COVID-19 waves, from June 2020 to April 2021, housing transactions recovered swiftly, as quarterly purchases crossed even the pre-pandemic levels for all the selected cities. This boost in housing demand is possibly because of pent up demand and measures taken by the government to increase affordability. The number of unsold residential units have also witnessed significant drops during the second wave of the pandemic.
National Housing Bank (NHB) RESIDEX HPI@Assessment Prices index (Base 2017-18) captures the prices of residential housing properties for the transactions through primary lending institutions. Data on composite index for prices and transaction records from NHB have been used to analyze the impact of first and second COVID-19 wave on the housing transactions and prices across a sample of 12 cities.