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Property market to bounce back next year: MarkPlus
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Illustration of a housing complex (Shutterstock/karelnoppe)
W
hile house sales are expected to be slow this year due to the pandemic, some consumers are merely delaying purchase and planning to buy a house next year, according to a survey by marketing consulting firm MarkPlus.
MarkPlus, which surveyed 100 respondents living mostly in Greater Jakarta, found that consumers were currently saving their money to maintain personal financial stability amid the COVID-19 pandemic that affected the country’s economy.
However, half of the surveyed respondents still expect to buy a house next year.
“The future demand may not be as strong, but we expect demand to bounce back next year as customers already have plans to buy [a house],” the firm’s senior associate, Irfan Setiawan, said in a virtual discussion on Friday.
To anticipate the recovery, Irfan said, he expected the current situation to have implications for the pricing strategy for residential property sellers and developers.
Currently, the combined sales of small, medium and large houses fell by 43.19 percent year-on-year (yoy) in the first three months of the year due to the unfolding pandemic, according to a recent survey by Bank Indonesia (BI).
However, the MarkPlus survey shows that 10 percent of the customers were still buying houses during the pandemic, signalling remaining demand despite the economic downturn.
Similarly, a survey by online property marketplace 99.co and rumah123.com found that 76 percent of the surveyed respondents were still looking for residential property this year.
“Now the consumers are searching and browsing [for homes] online,” 99.co chief executive officer Ming H. Chong said in the same virtual discussion. “They are also more picky.”
Based on the marketplace survey, a quarter of the respondents, most of whom are millennials living in Greater Jakarta, look for houses within the price range of Rp 250 million (US$17,069) to Rp 500 million or Rp 1 billion to Rp 2 billion.
Housing developers have also seen a positive trend in sales through online platforms.
Developer Ciputra Group reported Friday that it booked sales valued at Rp 130 billion for houses with an average price of Rp 250 million in its Citra Maja Raya project in Lebak Regency, Banten, between April 18 and 26 via its newly developed online platform.
Meanwhile, through its Citra Garden Puri project in West Jakarta, the developer booked Rp 55 billion in sales for houses with an average price of Rp 2.5 billion on May 9.
“We have tried online sales with the low-to-middle [customer] segment, and it worked,” the developer’s marketing director, Yance Onggo, said in the same online discussion. “The online sales turned out to go well with the middle-upper segment, too.”
Real estate firm Summarecon Agung reported it still managed to sell houses with prices above Rp 6 billion from its project in Bekasi in West Java, according to Adrianto Adhi, the president director.
“We could survive between January and March, but we recorded a correction in April sales,” Adrianto said in the same discussion.
According to the marketplace survey, consumers expect a 10 percent decline in house prices.
In the first quarter of the year, house prices grew at a slightly slower pace of 1.68 percent compared with growth of 1.77 percent in the previous quarter, according to a survey by the central bank.
