Empowering homebuyers and industry players through Makaan.com Property Index

•  Makaan.com, India’s fastest growing online real estate website by People group has launched country’s first Property Index.  Christened Makaan.com Property Index (MPI) the tool is aimed at empowering homebuyers and industry players with up-to date information related to movement in residential property prices. This tool will assist the homebuyers to make an informed decision, when he/she heads out to buy their dream home. MPI aims to provide a direction to the buyer so that they invest their hard earned money in the right manner.
  
•  Makaan.com Property Index (MPI) is part of a bigger initiative known as MakaanIQ that has been bringing out property intelligence & research reports for the benefit of homebuyers and real estate industry.
   

Makaan.com Property Index Methodology

•  Coverage:  Makaan.com Property Index tracks property price trends nationally and for major metros and tier II cities of India.
   
•  Frequency: Monthly – Starting Jan 2009.
  
•  Database: This index is based on minimum database size of 20,000 data points every month and the analysis has been drawn over a period starting Jan’09. The prices of properties are obtained across micro-markets through property listings on the website as well as Makaan.com’s nationwide sales force.
   
•  Index Algorithm: The complex algorithm takes into account the property prices as base and then factors in the demand and supply of residential properties for each of the cities covered by it. Care has been taken to give weight age to cities in line with the size of underlying property market.

Makaan.com Kolkata Property Index

Monthly Trend: At the city level, the property prices in Kolkata have seen a marginal drop in the last month. The index in April 2010 stands at 1168, which is 0.9% lower than March 2010 when the MPI was 1179.

Quarter Analysis: Over the last 3 months, Kolkata property index has moved from 1023 in the beginning of 2010 to 1168 in April 2010, a 14.2% increase. The months of February and March saw some increase in prices.

Year – on – year movements – As compared to last year i.e April 2009, the MPI in April 2010 has moved up by 54.1%.   Kolkata Realty sector is seeing better days in the first half of 2010 as against the severe drops in prices and investor / buyer optimism that was witnessed a year back.

City Level: Over the last 1-year, i.e. between April 2009 to April 2010, most cities have seen significant increases in property prices. Kolkata and Ahmedabad have seen very steep price increases – upwards of 40%.  Pune, Delhi, and Mumbai – the large real estate markets have also seen 14-20% price increases.  In comparison to these, Bangalore has seen modest price improvements – 2.2%.  Hyderabad, and Chennai have seen a reduction in property prices in the same period       

Going Forward: The stock market has been volatile in the last few weeks due to the eurozone’s economic problems, which seems likely to continue for some time.  On the other hand - the signals from the Indian Economy are quite positive - Industrial output, Exports and the GDP are rising, and jobs are more secure than before.  In the current situation one would expect the realty sector to maintain stability of prices.