Thane West in Mumbai most searched localities for home buying

Real estate portal Housing.com on Monday said that Thane West in Mumbai region was most searched location on its platform for purchase of homes during 2022 calendar year followed by Whitefield in Bengaluru and Noida Extension in Delhi-NCR.

New Town in Kolkata and Mira Road East in Mumbai were at 4th and 5th position, respectively, in terms of search for residential properties on Housing.com. Chandkheda in Ahmedabad was at 6th position, followed by Wakad in Pune, Kharghar in Pune, Gota in Ahmedabad and Vastral in Ahmedabad, Housing.com said in a statement.

For the period from January to December 2022, these were the top 10 trending localities where high intent and high-volume organic searches for buying a home were recorded on the Housing.com platform, it added. Housing.com also observed that out of the total searches on its platform (website and mobile app), 60 per cent customers were looking to buy residential properties while the remaining 40 per cent wanted to take property on rent. For buying, the sweet spot was for apartments below Rs 50 lakh, as maximum searches were seen in this price bracket.

Dhruv Agarwala, Group CEO of Housing.com and PropTiger.com, said, "Based on the trends highlighted in our latest report, I am optimistic about the future of the Indian residential real estate market." "We expect the demand for housing to remain strong in the top micro-markets, and we see a growing interest in new apartments and properties priced between Rs 1 crore to 2 crore. We also see a lot of potential in tier 2 cities, where online property searches for apartments are growing at a faster pace than for independent homes," Agarwala said.

He noted that sales of residential properties continue to be robust even during the current quarter despite the hike in interest rates over the past year. "Overall, I am bullish on the future of the Indian residential real estate market and I believe that the industry will continue to see growth in the coming years, driven by factors such as urbanization, rising disposable incomes, and favourable government policies," Agarwala said.

The data showed that searches for residential properties priced between Rs 1-2 crore grew 24 per cent annually in 2022. Moreover, homebuyers searched for new apartments with queries rising by 52 per cent in 2022 over the previous year. Queries for resale properties registered a 2 per cent year on year drop in 2022. Online searches for properties with a 3BHK and above configuration grew 1.4 times in 2022. Online property search volume for renting homes grew 1.5 times in 2022.

Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad took the lion's share in searches and queries for renting a home in 2022. In tier 2 cities, Lucknow emerged as the top city for buying a home, followed by Jaipur and Indore. Online property searches for apartments grew at a pace of 23 per cent year-on-year, as compared to 8 per cent year-on-year for independent homes in 2022.

Ankita Sood, Head of Research, Housing.com and PropTiger.com, said: "We are definitely in the up-cycle for residential realty demand owing to the pandemic induced shift towards higher home-ownership." Fuelled by both end-user and investor interest, she said, the property markets have shown resilience where buyers are carefully filtering out projects and looking for the right product mix in terms of affordability, accessibility and quality of living.