HOUSING PRICES UP BY 1 %

Housing prices have increased marginally by an average 1.1 per cent in 20 major cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, in January-March 2013 over the previous quarter due to slowdown in demand, National Housing Bank said today. Residential housing prices in 12 cities have shown increase in prices in this quarter ended March, 2013 over the previous quarter (October-December, 2012), quarterly update of NHB Residex said. On the contrary, eight cities have shown decline in prices over the previous quarter with maximum fall observed in Guwahati (-7.84 per cent) followed by Ludhiana (-6.71 per cent), Surat (-6.67 per cent). Besides, price correction was witnessed in Kolkata by 5.75 per cent, Lucknow by 3.18 per cent, Hyderabad 2.23 per cent and Chennai 1.28 per cent. "Property prices in majority of the cities are witnessing marginal upward trend," NHB said in a statement. Price increase was witnessed in Jaipur (28.74 per cent) followed by Bhubneshwar (14.54 per cent), Pune (7.81 per cent), Bhopal (6.49 per cent), Delhi (3.59 per cent), Bengaluru (2.83 per cent), Mumbai (2.31 per cent), Kochi (2.30 per cent) and Faridabad (0.98 per cent). NHB RESIDEX tracks the movement in prices of residential properties on a quarterly basis since 2007. The index for Delhi includes property transactions in Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad. NHB RESIDEX has been expanded to include six new cities namely Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Meerut, Nagpur and Raipur from this quarter, it said.