COVID-19 Impact: Mumbai Apartments Worth Rs. 10 Crore And More Might Drop To 30 – 35 This Year

The COVID-19 crisis could cause a drop of 30-35 percent year-on-year in the sales of Mumbai properties valued at over Rs 10 crore. Overall, luxury housing units worth Rs 9,000 crore have been sold in the city since 2019, a report by Zapkey.com has said.

The number of transactions in 2019 was 311 and till October 2020 the number had dropped to 164. The total value of these property deals fell to Rs 3,318 crore till October 2020 from Rs 5,919 crore in 2019, according to the online platform that aggregates and organises publicly available property registration data.

In August 2020, 11 properties valued at over Rs 10 crore were registered to total Rs 213 crore. In September, 16 such properties worth Rs 368 crore were registered while in October, 37 properties worth Rs 696 crore were registered. In August 2019, 18 properties worth 338 crore were registered; in September 2019, 26 properties worth Rs 609 crore were registered and in October 2019, 21 properties worth Rs 343 were registered, it said.

“Despite COVID-19, the worth of properties registered in October is almost double of last year,” Sandeep Reddy, co-founder at Propstack, told Moneycontrol.

Data for the months of November and December has not yet been released.

Most of these properties are spread across Worli, Juhu, Malabar Hill and Mahalaxmi.

“Post COVID-19 and reduction of the stamp duty in Mumbai, most buyers who had booked their units earlier, are now rushing to get their luxury units registered before December 31,” Reddy said

Most of these units attract huge stamp duty and for such buyers, it is a saving of almost Rs 30 lakh and more, he added.

The limited-period stamp duty cut of 3 percent up to December 2020 and 2 percent between January-March 2021 has had an impact even in Mumbai’s hyper-expensive luxury locales, real estate experts said.

The stamp duty cut alone helps buyers save at least Rs 12 lakh on a property worth Rs 4 crore, and the saving increases in tandem with the average property cost. The pandemic impact on this clientele is seen to be minimal as they are primarily looking for the address, with buyers largely scouting for ready homes or those nearing completion, they said.

On August 26, the Maharashtra government decided to temporarily reduce stamp duty on housing units from 5 percent to 2 percent until December 31, 2020, to boost the stagnant real estate market hit by COVID-19. Stamp duty from Jan 1, 2021, until March 31, 2021, will be 3 percent. Later, the ready reckoner rates were hiked by 1.74 percent.

In March too, the Maharashtra government had announced that it was reducing stamp duty on properties by 1 percent (from 6 percent) for Mumbai, MMRDA Region and Pune for two years.

It should also be noted that the last two months have seen a slew of high-end properties getting registered in the city. On September 21, lawyer Cyril Shroff and his daughter Paridhi Karan Adani, who is Gautam Adani’s daughter-in-law, jointly bought an uber-luxury unit in Mumbai’s Worli area for Rs 36.3 crore. The unit, located in 360 West by Oberoi Realty, is spread across 583.53 sq m. It is registered under the name APC Benefit Trust.

On September 29, another property located in the 360 West project, worth Rs 42.5 crore, was registered. The size of the property is 699.56 sq m. Property worth Rs 50.5 crore in the same project was registered on September 2. The size of the unit was 730.02 sq m.

Similarly, a property worth Rs 39 crore, located in Carmichael Residences by Peninsula Land in Tardeo was registered on October 9. The unit is 3,185.68 sq ft. It has been reported that the property located in South Mumbai’s Carmichael Road has been bought by Anurang Jain, managing director of Endurance Technologies.

(Source: Moneycontrol)