The festival season is already round the corner across India and the momentum in Real Estate market has already picked up w.r.t sale & purchase as well as lease of property whether its an office, retail/shop or a residence. In terms of commercial office leasing, the first three quarters of 2019, leasing activity continued its strong momentum across seven major cities in India, with gross absorption recorded at 40.1 million sq feet, a 9.0% increase over corresponding period last year. In the first three quarters of 2019, gross leasing activity in Delhi-NCR was recorded at 7.4 million sq feet. The city recorded an uptick in gross absorption with 2.9 million sq ft in the Q3 2019, which is 2% more than Q2 2019.
Robust occupier confidence in the market is noted throughout the year with festive season being no exception. The increased confidence is signified with large deals (in excess of 100,000 sq ft), rising by 1.5x compared to 2018. We expect demand to be driven by Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPM) occupiers, coworking, pharmaceutical, engineering and manufacturing companies for their global in-house centers resulting in similar range of leasing activity in NCR as last year. Further, w.r.t the commercial office/retail sale & purchase, many developers & builders have already rolled out various schemes and discounts to attract customers. Some of them include additional return on investment, overseas trip on every booking, on the spot gold coins, chance to win a dream car, flexible payment plan/struture, free car parking, etc.
This time of the year specially the time/beginning of Navratras is considered to be very auspicisious for property acquisition and we have seen this trend year-on-year amongst commercial office investors/buyers doing purchase/sale transaction during this time. Lastly, the customer/investor/end user wanting to buy a commercial real estate during this festive season has ample opportunities and projects to choose from in all major markets across NCR like Gurugram, Delhi & Noida. For example in the city of Gurugram, various prominent developers like DLF, Vatika, Ambience, M3M, Emaar, Bestech, Adani have various commercial office/retail projects both in CBD & off CBD markets of Gurugram in ready & under construction category where customer depending on their location preference and budgets can opt to buy a property. Overall, the commercial office market is looking very positive and we see a further boost to property acquisition activity across NCR market/all asset class.