After the Great Online Shopping Festival, it’s the Great Online Home Festival or GOHF.
The ten day long online event, organized by Magicbricks, GroupM and Google – will be held from 18th July till 27th July, 2015.
Property stock worth upto Rs. 3000 cr will be available for customers to choose from, Magicbricks said in a statement.
“It’s the first of its kind holistic online event that brings the best deals in the real-estate industry and also in home decoration & homecare brands at one online platform,” the firm said.
The festival will offer exclusive and never before deals from the best developers from top metros. The event has been conceptualized to help buyers to choose their dream homes without having to go through the hassle of finding great deals.
“Besides the properties, the customers will also be able to avail a large range of home décor and home care products who will also offer amazing deals and discounts to the consumers,” it said.
Speaking about the initiative, Mr. Sudhir Pai, CEO, and Magicbricks said: “GOHF is our bid to reignite transactions in the real estate market. As the leader in the category, we’re delighted to partner with leading players in the category to help propel the online real estate industry forward by bringing the best deals in real estate to consumers in India.”
The Indian real estate market has been in a slump due to run-away property prices. Property prices have risen by about 20% per year for the last 15 years or so, making them unaffordable for ordinary mortals.
At present, a 2-BHK flat in Mumbai costs around Rs 1.5 cr, while a two-bedroom flat in Bangalore in a decent area costs around Rs 1 cr.
Interest cost alone for a Rs 1 cr home loan comes to about Rs 90,000 per month, while the average middle-class professional in urban India earns a salary of only around Rs 60,000. As a result, most young professionals have stopped buying flats to live In.
The apartments inside the cities are affordable only to people who earn salaries in foreign exchange, or non-resident Indians, or to businessmen.
However, some salaried professionals still buy flats outside the city in the hope that prices will continue to go up 20% per year.
Real estate players have been trying to reignite the market without resorting to price cuts. Online sales is the latest fashion to hit the real estate sector. Recently, housing.com said it had sold 300 flats of a single developer in one month.
Commenting on its new property GOHF, Lakshmi Narasimhan, Chief Growth Officer, GroupM South Asia said, “Online shopping events have proven successful for high ticket purchases in the past, and we are seeing an emerging consumer segment who is comfortable making purchase decision based on information available online. We are very excited about this initiative and we hope that we will be able to establish this initiative as a win-win proposition for both the industry and the consumer”.
Nitin Bawankule, Industry Director Google India said, “Our research shows that consumers are spending increasing amount of time online to find property related information on the web and we have witnessed over 3x growth in search queries in the last three years in the real estate category.
“Builders and developers have a huge opportunity to engage the potential buyers online by providing rich, accurate and detailed information. Few early adopters have already benefitted from selling their inventory online and we hope that initiatives like these will help more developers to realise the true potential of Internet and engage more buyers online.”