So, the recovery in the housing market is the need of the hour,” added Mr Sood. “We are seeing heightened property search activity on Housing.com which points towards a positive turnaround for the residential real estate market for 2021. Reflecting the optimism in the sector, Housing.com’s IRIS index, which is a leading indicator to assess the upcoming residential demand in the country, closed at an all-time high in September of this year”, said Ankita Sood, Director and Head of Research, PropTiger.com, Housing.com & Makaan.com.

In the case of Bengaluru, the online high-intent homebuyer activity in the city is already 90 per cent closer to the historical peak of March 2021. Most of these property searches are concentrated in prominent commercial and residential locales such as Krishnarajapura, Whitefield, Varthur and Electronic City. The build-up of search queries suggests improving consumer sentiment in this end-user driven residential market, signaling a positive outlook for the year.

The demand drivers over the last one year have been—low interest rates on home loans, stable housing prices in the last few years, discounts and special offers from builders to speed up liquidation of their stocks and stamp duty reduction by various state governments including Karnataka wherein the state has reduced the stamp duty on property priced between Rs 35 lakh and Rs 45 lakh to 3 per cent from the earlier 5 per cent. The adoption of work from home policy has also led to rise in housing demand. The belief in home ownership has gained momentum, even among young millennials who earlier were reluctant to buy homes, preferring the flexibility offered by shared living.

After the outbreak of the pandemic, the consolidation of housing demand towards big, listed and reputed developers has gained momentum. This is getting reflected in their quarterly sales bookings numbers. Nevertheless, India’s residential market would still take some time to reach pre-Covid levels of around 3.5 lakh units of annual sales.