Mumbais property registration still showing an upward trend Latest News

The real estate market in the country’s financial capital continues to witness sharp growth in housing sales as reflected in property registrations driven by the combination record-low home loan rates, discounts and reduction in stamp duty charges.

Property registrations in Mumbai have recorded over 70% on-year rise in February, the sixth successive month with significant growth in numbers as the rush among homebuyers to conclude their transactions continued.

At over 10,059 deals, this is the highest number of registrations witnessed in the month of February since 2012, showed the data from the office of the Inspector General of Registration Maharashtra. 

The sustained growth is being witnessed after the country's commercial capital had set a historic high of 19,552 deals in December, up 204% from a year ago. 

“We have been witnessing the rush among homebuyers across all of our 26 offices for the last few months and the trend continues even now. To avail the benefit of the government’s decision and to be able to register the document within next four months without any additional charges, many homebuyers are keen to pay the stamp duty on executed documents now,” Shridhar Dube-Patil, deputy inspector general of registration, Mumbai division, told ET. 

The growth in monthly registration numbers in February is recorded even after the 1% rise in stamp duty at 3% from January as against 2% until December end. In January too, registrations had risen over 69% to over 10,412 deals. 

In August, the government of Maharashtra had announced reduction in stamp duty on property registrations to 2% for transactions between September 1 and December 31 from 5% earlier. The stamp duty will be 3% for agreements to be registered between January 1 and March end. 

While the deal volume witnessed a spike, the stamp duty reduction has hit the revenue collection that stood at Rs 350 crore as against Rs 437 crore a year ago. 

Following the announcement of stamp duty reduction, property transactions in Mumbai, Pune and other urban pockets of the state have been witnessing a sharp jump. The registrar had to keep all 26 Mumbai offices open on all Saturdays to accommodate the higher number of deals.

The government has also started to operate registration offices in two shifts as against one shift operation that had started during Covid-19 period.

In Mumbai, all registration offices now commence operations at 7 AM and close at 9 PM as against the timing of 10AM to 5:30PM since the outbreak of Covid19. 

Apart from helping converting pent up demand in the mid-income and affordable segment, the stamp duty reduction has been driving several large-ticket transactions in the city and the trend is expected to pick up further.

Source: The Economic Times