Month in Review: Record-Breaking October for Real Estate

As 2021 draws to a close, real estate made great strides this year to make up for the prolonged slump in the industry and the immense challenges posed by the pandemic. With policy interventions at both, central and state levels, a host of attractive offers from developers, the positive sentiment witnessed during the recent festive season, and the gradual return to normality, 2021 has proved a landmark year for all stakeholders with no signs of a momentum change anytime soon.    

The period from July-September 2021 was special in many ways for a real estate sector beleaguered by the COVID pandemic. The second wave earlier in the year appeared to slow down the market’s upward streak. The festive season, though, made up for the lows of 2020, revealing spectacular numbers that emerged after India’s biggest homebuying spree in many years.

Real estate news was great in 2021

This festive season brought a lot of cheers to homebuyers and developers for entirely different reasons. Buyers in urban India believed Diwali is the best time to buy a home. Even before Diwali, Mumbaikars had kickstarted their annual homebuying during Navratri when the city recorded significantly higher home registrations as compared with the previous two months.

It kept getting better, first with news that housing prices are set to increase in the coming years, followed by a record 10-year high for property registrations in Mumbai. The homebuying part had well and truly begun. The icing on the cake, however, was this revealing insight – 2021 was the year in which homebuying was the most affordable throughout the entire last decade. All things considered, the COVID pandemic failed to arrest the upward trajectory of India’s housing sector.

The numbers were even better

Now that the big newsmakers of the real estate sector have been revealed, take a look at the numbers behind the headlines. We started the Statsplained! series to reveal all the stories that numbers tell. And the top story was Q3 2021 witnessed a massive surge in housing sales numbers across India’s top 7 real estate markets. MMR took the lion’s share of the top 7 in terms of absolute numbers and Mumbai came a close second in terms of percentage sales growth.

As mentioned earlier in this story, the near future of real estate is poised for growth. In the immediate future, though, the industry is expected to attain pre-COVID levels by 2022-23. Read all about it.

What’s trending this year?

The big and small boys of real estate are warming up to Millennials and Gen Z through a marketing practice that’s as new age as social media itself – welcome to the beginning of the era of social media influencers in real estate marketing.

Have you heard of co-living? If not, you belong to the majority of Indians, though not necessarily urban Indians. Co-living is still taking its first steps in the country’s crowded and expensive rental housing economy. But its potential could make it the next game-changing housing format where an entire community can co-live with all the perks of communal living while paying a lot less than traditional rent.

New launches galore in Mumbai and MMR

Puravankara announced an investment of 420 crore in two projects in MMR and Bengaluru. It has already made a splash with the announcement of the MMR project, Palm Vista at Shilphata by Provident Housing, a fully owned subsidiary.

Meanwhile, Lodha continued its march with new launches, announcing the pre-Diwali launch of Lodha Codename Premier at a coveted location in Dombivli. Pre-launched earlier this year, Lodha created a marketing frenzy, and deservingly so, for the brand-new landmark rising in Mulund East, Lodha Codename Limited Edition.

With so much happening in the real estate sector, no wonder then 2021 is the best time to buy a home. Don’t let us tell you that, because the data already did.