THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The third wave of the pandemic has dealt a crippling blow to the realty sector. Compared to December, property transfers dropped by over 10,000 in January as the state battled a high Covid caseload.
As many as 88,033 property transfers were registered with the government in January than over 98,363 registrations in December. The spike in Covid cases and temporary closure of some sub-registrar offices due to infection among staffers are cited as reasons for the decline which negatively impacted government’s revenue.
“The fall can be attributed to spread of Covid. Many people fell sick, while several others confined themselves to their homes to avoid getting infected. The realty sector is facing stagnation for two years now, ever since Covid outbreak. It has affected the livelihood of people dependent on construction and allied sectors,” said M A Mehaboob, chairman of CREDAI-Kerala. He said the third wave will worsen the situation unless government takes the lead in reviving the sector.
Professional document writers are worried too. A real assessment of realty sector cannot be made purely on the basis of total property transfers recorded with the Registration Department, says M K Anil Kumar, treasurer of the All Kerala Document Writers and Scribes Association. “This is because they include all kinds of transfers like sale, gift or partition deeds. The decline in property sales started after demonetisation in 2016 and worsened following the pandemic outbreak in 2020,” he says.
Anil Kumar, a licensed writer in Kozhikode, cited his own experience. “Before the note ban, over 70 per cent of my business used to be writing sales deeds. It started declined since November 2018 and I’m going through my worst phase during the pandemic. People like me are surviving because of gift and partition deeds which have low registration fee,” he said.