Vishal Raehja, Founder and CEO InvestoXpert, discusses how the second wave posed a challenge for the industry.
The Coronavirus pandemic majorly impacted the Indian real estate industry to an extent that it forced the realm to halt its activities all over again with the second wave hitting. The country was still reeling back from the effects of the last lockdown, when another one was imposed in the months from March to June 2021. The market was merely making significant progress towards recovery last year, but with another wave of the virus, this one far more fatal, it looks like a distant dream. Mr. Vishal Raehja, Founder and CEO InvestoXpert, discusses how the second wave posed a challenge for the industry.
Real estate is a sector that accounts for around 6-7 percent of India's overall GDP. 6-7% contribution to the GDP, thus making this industry a significant contributor to the overall economic growth. The overall sales in the real estate domain from January to March witnessed a deep dive in 2021, once the lockdowns took over the market. Records from a report by a reputed firm stated that the sales in the real estate sector during the second quarter of the year 2021 could slip 58% below the previous quarter as only 24,570 units may be sold, compared with 58,290 in the first quarter. This itself shows how much the industry had to recover to rise again from the bar.
With people getting more cautious with each passing day to get out and look for that one perfect home keeping the sanitation aspects in place, the real estate was not left with much choice than to wait and get things back to normal. Mr. Vishal added, "Though it could not go unnoticed that many developers and real estate managers indeed tried to shift their prospectus online making the best use of technology, the buyers still preferred to have a first-hand experience of the accommodation space physically before making the big investment decision". Despite a dip in the leasing activity for housing and commercial accommodation spaces, real estate developers remained optimistic, as corporations explored hybrid models of reoccupying spaces for effective living like www.invesxtoxpert.com, offering the customers with practical solutions.
Technology giants and multinational companies at large continued to offer long-term, remote work, or as people call it now, Work-from-Home plans for their employees. So much so, that even the corporations that had signed pre-lease agreements for office spaces have not been able to call their employees back to work due to the continuous waves and imposition of lockdowns. Keeping these factors in mind, new businesses were also not in favor of investing in working spaces as it was not still clear if the world is safe or mankind is still under the danger of a third impending wave. The most impacted businesses under the wavering real estate turned out to be construction sites and commercial investors as their growth goes hand in hand with the increasing demand of people in buying properties.
Considering the same, even homebuyers were on halt waiting for vaccination drives to be completed successfully and then take their next steps forward to buy their dream places. Slowly and gradually as the vaccination programs make progress, individual homemakers are making a slow comeback to the market. Residential buyers henceforth have proven to be a positive support to the at-a-time crumbling industry.
With the lockdowns being lifted and the 'new normal' shifting back to the 'old way of normal' in a gradual manner, it could be said that in the coming months the footfall could rise to about 40 % to 50% of what it was before the second wave. It should also not go unnoticed that despite the havoc that the first wave caused and for a longer period on that, the market still rose back from the slumber and the real estate sector saw a boom in its commercialization during the first quarter of the financial year 2021. One could hope for the same to continue with a few revolutions in the industry and see the uprise again in the coming few months.
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