Property prices down by 1% flat in Mumbai

Plan to buy property in and around Mumbai? Now's the time, opine real estate experts. A slight downward shift in prices, they say, could herald good news for buyers.

According to the latest survey put out by real estate research firm, Liases Foras, for the first time in the last three or four years, the weighted average price (derived from simple average) of residential property in the Mumbai metropolitan region — Mumbai, its suburbs and 22 civic bodies around — has gone down by a marginal 1 per cent in the last quarter.

Other metros — Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi — have seen a reverse trend, with weighted average prices on the upswing for the same period.

Managing director of Liases Foras, Pankaj Kapoor, said that this correction in price, albeit marginal, is a good sign for home buyers. “Besides, 11,000 new residential projects were launched this year. The piling up of housing stock has only led to a decline in skyrocketing prices. Also, developers are already facing a liquidity crunch," said Kapoor. “The marginal fall will be welcomed by buyers looking for affordable houses.”

After the marginal fall in prices, the average per-square-foot rate in the metro region is Rs11,295 while the average cost of a flat is down to Rs1.17crore. This year, the metro region has had 1.29 lakh flats lying unsold as against 1.17 lakh of last year. In Mumbai, 39,295 have been unsold against last year's 34,000.

Developer say that the marginal price correction has happened where property rates were highly inflated. President of Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry, Paras Gundecha, said that prices are not likely to fall any further. “Actually, this is the right time to buy property," said Gundecha. "There's no chance for rates to fall in future what with cost of land and construction material rising and procuring government approvals getting more time-consuming."

Managing director of Shivam Developer, Manohar Shroff, said that the correction in prices could happen in the "saturated market", referring to plush localities in the metro region like South Mumbai and Navi Mumbai's Palm beach road where prices hardly fluctuate. "The correction will not happen in the emerging market where prices are low,” said Shroff.

Source (Sudhir Suryawanshi, DNA, 27 Jan 2013, Mumbai) : "Property prices down by 1% flat in Mumbai."