Exhibitors upbeat about sales by year end

The three-day exhibition in its 10th edition features hundreds of residential projects in the price-range of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 10 crore. Around 25,000 walk-ins are expected over the duration of the exhibition. Suresh Krishn, President of CREDAI-Chennai said, “As many as 70 developers are here at the exhibition with around 400 properties on display. The exhibition eliminates barriers such as scouting for potential builders only on the weekends and offers customers a wide range of properties, which also facilitates easy comparison. And in contrast to individual visits, where all that happens is data gathering, at the exhibition, there is an option for making decisions after ample research in such avenues.” 

He adds, “About 95 per cent of apartments in Chennai cost less than Rs 1 crore and are fully funded by banks. So there never was a cash component in the realty transactions here. People expected a 30 per cent dip in demand for real estate, but that did not happen as it was the projection at all-India level. There has been no reduction in the buying of properties since the time of demonetisation. Chennai happens to be the only city where the available stock of apartments is coming down. We all stopped launching new projects due to which the existing stocks are coming down drastically and we expect to sell off all the existing homes before the end of the year.” 

Developers are adopting the wait and watch methodology, as Dhanasekar N, Assistant Manager – Sales, Baashyam Constructions (P) Ltd tells DTNext, “The exhibition will certainly help us generate more leads. But I think it’s post-exhibition when the bulk of the work starts. It will take a few months for demand to pick up as the people’s purchasing power is just starting to rise. The months of January to March are considered generally favourable for the realty sector, as it’s close to the financial year- end and people usually tend to defer their choices for home buying to this period, keeping in mind the budget and any other announcements.” 

Homebuyers in the city who were looking for great discounts, however opined that it might be a while before they could strike gold. Viswalingam, an NRI professional based in Qatar, who was here on a visit says, “We wanted to see how the prices have shaped up post the demonetisation. However, we saw that many of the properties being offered were about one to two years old and we were expecting higher discounts on the houses. But we  weren’t too impressed with the prices we were offered.”