Why new home launches saw a significant drop in 2014

Real estate developers launched 1.53 lakh new housing units during the last calendar year, a fall of 12 per cent from 2013, in the country's top eight cities.

According to property consultant Cushman & Wakefield, cities such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune had together witnessed a launch of 1,74,400 housing units during 2013. Barring Chennai and Kolkata, the other six cities saw fall in the number of launches.

In Delhi-NCR, the launch of new homes dropped by 30 per cent to 38,400 units in 2014 from 26,800 units in the previous year, C&W said in a statement.

Mumbai saw a decline of 19 per cent in launches at 25,000 units, while Bengaluru witnessed a fall of 17 per cent at 40,900 flats. Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai accounted for 60 per cent of the total new launches in 2014.

The number of new unit launches dropped substantially by 46 per cent in Hyderabad as developers reconcile to the changing market dynamics post the bifurcation of the state, the consultant said.

C&W Executive Managing Director South Asia Sanjay Dutt said: "Despite the upliftment of economic sentiments post the election, the end user uptake of residential units has been restricted leaving a reasonable unsold inventory that developers would like to off-load."

Mid-segment residential units continued to remain favourite amongst developers with a two-third share in total launches.

Unit launches in this segment increased by 5 per cent from the previous year.

"Unit launches in the high-end segment dipped by 29 per cent in a year; whilst in the affordable segment they declined by 38 per cent from the previous year. Although luxury units contributed only 1 per cent to total unit launches, they increased by five times from the previous year," the statement said.