Realty stocks may resume rally as economy reopens | Economic Times

MUMBAI: Real estate stocks may catch investors’ fancy now as the reopening of the economy post the second wave of Covid-19 improves the outlook for the sector.So far in 2021, the Nifty Realty index has underperformed the benchmark Nifty50 with around 7 per cent returns against the Nifty50’s 12 per cent gains. This is, after the sector saw a rapid rally from the end of the national lockdown in June till December as residential housing demand saw an unexpected recovery.According to real estate consulting firm ANAROCK, residential sales have already picked up in the past two weeks after falling during April and May due to Covid-19 related restrictions. According to the consulting firm, sales are back to September 2020 levels, and are poised to see a robust bounceback in the second half of the current financial year.With several companies making work-from-home optional or mandatory, households are pushing to buy bigger houses in order to increase the comfort of their working space. Indian joint family tradition, even in big cities, makes the current set-up unsuitable to work from home, according to industry watchers.Further, the steep cut in interest rates undertaken by the central bank over the past two years coupled with initiatives such as stamp duty cuts in places like Mumbai have given a fillip to demand as well.“Low mortgage rates and muted price hikes will continue to support demand along with availability of ready to move inventory,” brokerage firm ICICI Securities said in a recent nore.Veteran asset manager Kenneth Andrade of Old Bridge Capital believes in the current market environment, investors should go after sectors that have been unloved by investors. One such sector is real estate, Andrade told ETNow.Andrade said over the past decade, organised real estate developers have made concerted efforts to improve each and every metric. Consulting firm ANAROCK believes organized real estate companies will continue to grab market share from unorganized players and will control 60 per cent of the market.“If one is going to specifics, the probability of coming out in 2022, 2023, or 2024, even if the market corrects and that probability is very high -- one can expect fairly nice returns on the portfolio,” Andrade told ETNow.