Land deals by builders jump over 3-fold to 68 in January-September in 8 cities

Real estate developers are aggressively looking to expand their business with revival in demand, resulting in a sharp rise in the number of land deals which jumped over three-fold to 68 across eight major cities during January-September this year, according to property consultant Anarock.

Anarock has compiled the land transactions, which include both outright purchases by developers and also joint development agreements (JDAs).

At least 68 separate land deals, accounting for 1,656 acres, were closed in the first nine months of 2022 across top eight cities, as against just 20 land deals for 925 acres in the corresponding period of last year, it said.

Out of the 68 deals in the January-September period of 2022, as many as nine were either JDAs or on revenue sharing basis. The remaining deals were outright purchase.

Land, the most precious finite resource amid rapid urbanisation, has been seeing increased action after the Covid-19 pandemic, Anarock noted.

To encash the surge in housing demand compared to 2020 and 2021, all major real estate firms like Macrotech Developers, Godrej Proerties and Prestige Estates are buying land parcels outright and also entering into partnership with landlords.

"In terms of land area transacted, Hyderabad has seen the biggest land transactions so far this year," said Santhosh Kumar, Vice Chairman of Anarock Group.

"In terms of total number of land deals, MMR (Mumbai Metropolitan Region) clocked the highest number of deals; while the total area transacted was unspectacular, one must also consider the steep prices in this land-starved city," he added.

Of the total land deals during January-September of this year, there were 40 deals comprising 590.54 acres for development of residential projects, while four land deals were for industrial and logistics parks covering 147 acres.

For the development of data centres, four land deals were struck for 118.8 acres.

Five deals for 115 acres of land were struck for mixed-use projects and another four transactions involving 25.73 acres for commercial projects.

Eleven land deals, comprising 658.94 acres, were for development of retail and other real estate assets.

With some of the larger deals, there is still ambiguity about the type of development that will take place there, the consultant said.

Among cities, the Delhi-NCR property market saw 16 land deals comprising 233.83 acres during January-September this year.

This included nine deals for a total of 197 acres in Gurugram, and seven in Delhi, Faridabad, and Noida.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region witnessed 17 deals accounting for 198.62 acres.

Number of land deals in Bengaluru stood at nine, comprising 223.2 acres.

In Hyderabad, there were only seven land deals but the total area was high at 769.25 acres.

Pune witnessed eight land deals totalling 123.7 acres, while Chennai saw seven deals totalling 92.21 acres.

Number of land deals in Kolkata stood at only one at 5.6 acres.

Ahmedabad saw three land deals comprising 9.6 acres during the first nine months of this calendar year.

Housing demand has revived strongly after the slowdown in the last two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. So builders, especially large ones, are looking to launch more projects.

As per the Anarock data, housing sales across seven major cities increased to 2,72,709 units during January-September this year from 1,45,651 units in the corresponding period of the previous year.

The January-September figure of this calendar year is higher than the 2,61,358 units sold during the entire 2019 calendar year.