Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic Crisis on the Real Estate Housing Sector

Abstract

The purpose of this research paper is to gauge the impact of the on-going pandemic crisis on the Residential Housing Sector in India. The major factors to be considered are labor availability, revenue generation, supply-demand analysis, consumer behavior, impact on the economy, change in construction cost and completion time of project.

The Covid19 pandemic outbreak is expected to affect India’s economy adversely. According to a Knight Frank India survey conducted on 16th April 2020, both the residential and commercial real estate sectors are expected to be hit hard in terms of sales and revenues as per 50% of the respondents who filled the survey.

Residential sales in the top seven cities was 45,200 units as compared to 78,510 units in 2019 during first six months of 2020 when compared to the previous year. The new launches also dropped by 42% annually according to Anarock’s research during the first half of 2020 when compared to the previous year. Even though few government initiatives have been helpful, there is still a long way to go in terms of providing relief to all the segments of the real estate housing sector.

The residential housing sector which was already facing problems of low demand will find it difficult to launch new projects and complete the ongoing housing projects due to construction work being affected due to migrant workers returning to their hometowns.