How has the luxury housing market panned out in the top cities?
The bull run in Indian luxury housing continues even while property prices are on the rise. India’s most expensive city, Mumbai, saw revenue collections from property registrations touching a new high in February 2023 at Rs1,102 crore. This was a whopping 79 per cent jump against February 2022 collections. Interestingly, even while revenue collections went up significantly in the period in Mumbai, the total number of property registrations saw a drop of 8 per cent in the year, clearly indicating that the sale of big-ticket price homes saw significant movement.
If we deep-dive into data further, February 2023 has seen the highest revenue collection in Mumbai in the last five years in the same month. Also, in entire FY2023, we saw February record the maximum revenue collections. Even Anarock data indicates growth in luxury sales in all top seven cities in the post-Covid period against the pre-Covid one. For instance, nearly 10,500 luxury units were sold in Mumbai Metropolitan Region in 2019, while in 2022, a whopping 32,900 units were sold in the luxury category. Other cities also reported similar or more growth.
Who is the new emerging buyer of luxury real estate?
Besides the usual businessmen and film stars, a considerable number of young Indians from the entrepreneurial set, the nouveau riche including start-up founders and CXOs are the new clientele for luxury homes.
Do you think luxury housing sales will sustain through 2023, given that lending costs have risen and the government’s move to cap capital gains tax at Rs10 crore comes into effect in April?
The move by the finance minister to cap capital gains at Rs10 crore may have some impact on luxury housing sales. It could be a deterrent to an extent, especially for those who were looking to buy a residential home for investment purpose. However, to say that it will have a major impact on this segment is also not correct. As such, the end-user demand may not be entirely impacted by this move, but the impact may be felt more on the investment demand. Also, more than the primary market, I think the impact could be on the secondary market sales of the luxury and ultra-luxury homes.