Kailash Babar, The measures announced by the Mumbai
government for sectors such as automobiles, which are troubled by economic slowdown , will not be limited to these industries. The poor condition of these sectors is also hurting other sectors, such as housing. Car and two-wheeler sales have historically declined in a year. At the same time, the number of layoffs in the industry is touching the sky.
The auto industry, which has gone into back gear, has also slowed down the pace of industries like real estate. The most impact has been on the affordable housing segment. The automobile sector’s workforce is ahead in affordable housing purchases with affordable housing of Rs 40 lakh. Prashant Thakur, director and research head of Enarock Property Consultants, said, “Job risk has increased due to the deterioration of the automobile sector, which has deterred workers from buying homes.” Thakur said that government measures have increased hopes of recovery in sectors like automobile and MSME.
According to data from Enarock, sales in Pune, Chennai and NCR in the affordable housing segment were good last year. Affordable housing sales in these cities have been increasing since 2017. The three had total sales of more than 32,000 units in the 40 lakh or cheaper homes segment that year. In 2018, this figure rose 18% to 37,800 units. In the first half of 2019, more than 27,000 affordable homes were sold in the three cities combined.
J Shah, the National Chairman of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI), said, “Shortly after the budget, the government has ensured that the industries get the necessary help ahead of the festive season. Any step taken late would have proved unsuccessful. We hope that demand for affordable housing will increase in the coming festive season.
The government announced several measures last week to boost economic growth. These include packages to boost auto sector sales, capital of 70,000 crore for public sector banks, increase in credit flow and cheap housing and auto loans.
The three cities mentioned above have the highest number of 67,250 affordable houses in NCR, which have not been sold yet. The automobile sector majors in the Gurugram-Manesar region are units of Maruti Suzuki India, Hero MotoCorp, Honda Motorcycle and Scooters India. In Pune, 46,360 homes in the 40 lakh segment have not been sold yet. At the same time, 10,590 houses are remaining in Chennai. According to Thakur, if the present government had not supported affordable housing, the condition of the residential sector would have been worse.
