Attractive builder discounts, bank loans offers, stamp duty reduction, home-loan interest rate cuts and greater savings due to lower spend during the lockdown have inspired 82 per cent of customers to buy houses in 2021, up from 64 per cent who were looking to buy in 2020.
The under-40 age group that preferred the “never settle” lifestyle and want to enjoy the perks of moving cities/localities to follow their passions, today want to buy homes. Bigger three-bedroom homes in the suburbs are preferred to accommodate the work/study from home lifestyle that Covid-19 has ushered in, with 19 per cent buyers looking for 3BHKs and above, a jump from 7 per cent in 2019.
Online rent payment has seen a big jump to 62 per cent in 2020 from 40 per cent last year, while brokerage services have been on the decline for both tenants and buyers. And 61 per cent look for housing societies due to the convenience offered by society complexes through the society management app — which offers grocery services, health tracker through Aarogya Setu, touchless visitor entry, SOS button etc.
These are some of the findings from the fourth edition of NoBroker Real Estate Report 2020, with insights from its internal data of over 10 million registered customers — including owner and seller listings, tenant and buyer searches and deal closures on its platform. Additionally, 17,652 customers across Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad also participated in the survey.
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Greater spends
“Historically it has been observed that whenever the difference between home-loan interest rates and rental yields are less than 4.5-5 per cent, there is a massive surge in housing sales, and we can expect this to happen now. The 25-40 demographic that constituted over 49 per cent of buyers until last year has now rocketed to 63 per cent. Millennials who never wanted to be pinned down to one location, now want to own homes as the pandemic has changed their priorities,” Saurabh Garg, co-founder and Chief Business Officer, NoBroker.com told BusinessLine .
The survey indicates that buyer budgets have increased with 19 per cent looking to buy a property in the ₹80 lakh-1 crore bracket compared to 10 per cent last year. And 11 per cent are looking to buy a property above ₹1 crore, up from 7 per cent last year.
“Last year, 89 per cent people stated they rely on real estate websites, relatives/friends, or to-let boards to find a house, this year 92 per cent have stated they do not rely on brokers. We saved ₹1,021 crore in brokerage in 2020 across Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. We found that Hyderabad has the maximum number of first-time home buyers (84 per cent) followed by Bengaluru (80 per cent), Mumbai (73 per cent) , Chennai (73 per cent) and Pune (72 per cent)” said Garg.
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