Union Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary, DurgaShanker Mishra launches Housing.com-ISB'sHousing Pricing Index (HPI).

The HPI in association with the industry bodyNAREDCO, will enable homebuyers, investors, real estate developers andpolicymakers to track high-frequency price movement in India's key residentialmarkets.

Leading onlinereal estate portal, Housing.com, alongwith the global business school, Indian School of Business(ISB), has announced the launch of its Housing Pricing Index (HPI),an indicator of economic activity in real-estate. Real estate is thesecond-largest employment generating sector in India after agriculture. Launchedduring a virtual meet attended by Union Housing and Urban AffairsSecretary, Durga Shanker Mishra and several industry bigwigs andacademicians, the HPI will provide monthly reports on price and quantitymovement in various property markets across the country.

According to theGurugram-based digital real estate company, the HPI, created in associationwith the Indian School of Business’ (ISB) Srini Raju Centre for IT and theNetworked Economy (SRITNE), aims to serve as a tool that tracks changes inresidential home prices across India's eight major markets. Byoffering useful insights into price movement, the index could help a potentialhomebuyer assess the appropriate time to buy a property and, at the same time,assist sellers in knowing the most opportune moment to sell their assets. Policymakersand financial analysts can also use it as a reliable estimate to keep track ofthe trends in the sector.

Based on a surveyof cities such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR (Faridabad,Ghaziabad, Gurugram, Greater Noida and Noida), Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai andPune from 2017 to the present, conducted every quarter, the ElaraTechnologies-owned company's HPI uses granular prices from localities and theircorresponding weights based on transaction value share of that locality inIndia, basing its findings on 1-, 2-, and 3-BHK apartments. Data collected forthis purpose include information on price per square foot, quantity, and thetotal value of transactions in the previous three months for varioussub-localities within each city. It also includes other details such as thenumber of bedrooms, construction status, and the number of inventory units.

Shri. Durga ShankerMishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Govt. of India, said:“The Housing Price Index jointly developed by the Indian School of Business andHousing.com has the potential to emerge as a good indicator of the country’sreal-estate market health. The real-estate sector has been impacted due to theCOVID-led slowdown and overall uncertainty. At this time, it is essential totrack the growth via credible sources that will help authorities make quickerand informed decisions during such exogenous shocks.”

“Buyers as well aspolicymakers are mostly forced to rely on market anecdotes and guesswork aboutproperty price movements in Indian cities in the absence of qualityhigh-frequency data, especially locality specific data. The entire idea behindthe launch of the Housing HPI is to address this issue,” says Dhruv Agarwala,Group CEO, Housing.com, Makaan.com, and PropTiger.com. “Aside from benefittingbuyers, investors and policymakers, data from our HPI will also be immenselyvaluable for real estate developers who are considering a new locality tolaunch new developments. For real estate builders, having access to informationsuch as this has become more crucial than ever now, with the demandlandscape rapidly evolving due to the emergence of the ‘work-from-home’ conceptin the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Following the launchof the index, representatives from the government and industry stalwarts alsoshared their opinions and points of view about the ongoing pandemic situationand its impact on the industry during an interactive session.

Sharad Mittal,Executive Director/CEO – Real Estate Funds, Motilal Oswal Real EstateInvestment Advisors II Pvt Ltd., said, “In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemicdisrupted industries worldwide. India went into a countrywide lockdown, and thereal estate sector, like other industries, took an initial hit.However, after July last year, the housing sector saw a resurgence indemand on the back of bottomed-out prices, low mortgage rates, peakaffordability, Govt. incentives, and an increasing emotional value ofhome-ownership due to the pandemic. Several developers clocked record sales inthe last two quarters of the previous financial year. We believe that thisrecovery witnessed by the sector over the last nine months was more long-termand was a factor of strong growth-led fundamentals in the sector. While thereis a hiatus right now on account of the second COVID wave, we believe thatactivity will boomerang quickly and demand will remain strong over the next24-36 months”

For Details -www.housingpriceindex.in

“For real estatebuilders, having access to information such as this has become more crucialthan ever now, with the demand landscape rapidly evolving due to theemergence of the ‘work-from-home’ concept in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.”