NEW DELHI: At a time when housing sales dropped 18% year on year to 44,755 units in nine major cities during the September quarter on continued slowdown in the property market, sales in Gurgaon rose by 60% to 3,342 units, according to a report by realty portal Prop Tiger.com. The report said Mumbai also saw a 6% rise in sales to 12,101 units during the second quarter of this fiscal.

In other cities, new launches of homes fell by 53% to 22,115 units in the second quarter of the current fiscal owing to the implementation of new real estate law Rera, said the report.

It also said seven cities — Pune, Noida, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad — witnessed decline in sales as well as launches, while only two cities Mumbai and Gurgaon saw rise in demand and supply.

News Corp-backed PropTiger.com is part of Elara Technologies, which also owns Housing.com and Makaan.com.

"The new Rera and GST regime impacted launches as well as sales in the second quarter of FY '18. However, sales showed a marked improvement in September over July and August, driven by festival offers launched by most developers," said AnkurDhawan, chief investment officer, PropTiger.com.

Ahmedabad saw the maximum fall in sales of 46% to 2,222 units in the July-September quarter of 2017-18, over the year-ago period.

The decline in sales in Pune was 32% to 7,214 units, followed by Noida 29% to 3,606 units, Bengaluru 27%

to 6,976 units, Chennai 23% to 2,945 units, Kolkata 21% to 2,993 units and Hyderabad 18% to 3,356 units.

"Due to improved buyer confidence, Mumbai and Gurgaon recorded an increase in sales by 6% and 60% respectively over Q2 FY'17," PropTiger said.

Mumbai and Gurugram also saw increase in launches by 19% and 85% respectively during the quarter under review. Home launches in Mumbai stood at 9,584 units and Gurgaon 2,460 units. The other seven cities saw fall in new home launches in a range of 37-92%.

"The key driver for increased new launches in Gurgaon and Mumbai is the affordable housing launches under Haryana Affordable Housing Policy 2013 and timely implementation of Rera in Maharashtra," the brokerage firm said.

According to the report, Rera, though applicable since May 2017, was not implemented in many key states such as Karnataka, Haryana, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh till the middle of July 2017, which had a major impact on new launches.

"Though the last quarter looks sluggish, the long-term story for residential market remains strong. With effective implementation of Rera, we expect growth of 30-40% on year-on-year basis in sales and new launches in the next quarter," Dhawan said.