NEW DELHI: Official residential price indices for January-March, 2017 released on Monday by the Centre gave an opportunity to the government to slam the critics of demonetization. The indices has clearly revealed about the declining trends in transactions of unaccounted or black money.
Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said that indices for the last quarter of last financial year 2016-17 proved wrong the critics of demonetization who said that economy will take a hit. “The National Housing Bank also collected data on land prices which showed that a correction in land prices is taking place which again reflects the declining trend in transactions of unaccounted money,” said Naidu.
NHB RESIDEX for January-March,2017 revealed that price indices for residential properties based on actual market prices for ongoing construction prices have increased over the previous quarter in 24 of the 47 cities covered in the Index including in Jaipur, Chennai, Lucknow, Guwahati, Howrah, Hyderabad, Bidhannagar etc.
On the other hand, in cities like Delhi, Faridabad, Chandigarh, Patna and Nashik etc, prices have come down. This component of RESIDEX, called Housing Price Index@Market Prices is based on actual market information.
The other component of RESIDEX called as HPI@Assessment Prices based on the information furnished by banks and other lending agencies showed that prices have increased in 27 of the 50 cities surveyed. These include; Gurgaon, Mumbai, Vadodara, Raipur, Kanpur, Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam and Coimbattore. Prices, however, have declined in Ranchi, Gandhinagar, Surat, Ludhiana, Kolkata etc.
Officials said that the RESIDEX has been computed for three categories of houses with carpet of below 60 sq.mtre, 61-110 sq.mtres and 111 sq. mtres and above.
RESIDEX, the country’s first official housing price index (HPI) was launched in 2007 covering 26 cities and was published till March, 2015 on a quarterly basis. The revamped RESIDEX has been expanded to 50 cities spread over 18 States and UTs. These include 38 smart cities, of which 18 are state capitals.
ShriramKalyanaraman, CMD of National Housing Bank said that RESIDEX will soon cover 100 cities and also will be further widened to include Land Price Indices, Building Materials Price Indices and Housing Rental Index. “NHB RESIDEX helps buyers and sellers to check and compare prices before entering a transaction. They can also analyse the price trends across different cities both at composite level and product category level. It helps lenders in credit evaluation,” he added.