With slowdown pressure building up, property prices crash in city periphery

For the first time in the past 18 months, the real estate market in Chandigarh's periphery is showing signs of a downturn. Having stuck to their prices in the hope of a revival in the realty market, property investors and dealers are now buckling under pressure and have slashed their prices. In some cases, the reduction is upto 30 per cent.

While there seems to be no hope for a boom for the investor who had picked up large quantities of property during the upswing, the time to buy is now for the end user who waited for the prices to come down.

"The rates crashed because the investor's market did not pick up after the Assembly elections as was being hoped. The majority of the builders have not been impacted much because they had launched their projects more than a year ago and their entire lot was picked up during soft launches. Investors with deep pockets are hanging on to the lot but others are selling out at lower rates," says J S Kochar, managing director, KBKinfra.in, a property web portal.

In Mullanpur, currently the hot spot for investment, a spacious apartment floor is available for anything between Rs 27 lakh and Rs 33 lakh. In fact, here the rates for a property of this kind in resale is lower than booking a fresh property from a builder or a project promoter. And yet there are not many buyers.

"The glut of projects has made available over 75,000 flats in the periphery in various stages of launch and construction, most of which have been sold out by the builders but held on to by investors. The supply is simply not matching up to the demand of the end user," adds Amit Joshi, president of the Shimla Hills Cooperative Housing Society.

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