Over 3K houses sold in city in Nov, a 167% YoY growth

Kolkata: The Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA) has witnessed the registration of 3,047 residential sales agreements in November 2022, marking a 167 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth over November 2021.

This high annual growth is due to limited property registrations last year in November as there was a lack of awareness about the extension of the stamp duty rebate beyond October 31, 2021, a year ago.

However, on a month-on-month (MoM) basis, the November 2022 figures denote a 55 per cent decline over October 2022 as the bulk of properties awaiting registrations were captured earlier during 2022 and the stamp duty rebate is again nearing its expiry unless another extension is announced in 2023.

In 2022, Kolkata's residential market continued to benefit from the 2 per cent stamp duty remission which was extended thrice during this calendar year to provide relief to homebuyers. As per the study by the Directorate of Registrations and Stamps Revenue, Bengal government and Knight Frank India since the initial stamp duty cut announcement in July 2021, about 72,790 residential properties have been registered in the city in these 17 months. The preceding 17 months prior to the introduction of the stamp duty rebate saw the registration of only 44,736 units.

Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director, Knight Frank India, said: "Kolkata is one of the few Indian cities where homebuyers still enjoy a stamp duty rebate. Though the privilege is set to expire by the end of this year, we are hopeful the state government may consider another extension as now homebuyers' affordability has been dented due to the multiple repo rate revisions in 2022."

The South and North Zones garnered the highest percentage across different micro-markets for the apartments registered in their localities with a 42 per cent and 32 per cent share respectively. Both these zones together comprised 74 per cent of the properties registered during November 2022.