Illustration of a housing complex. Shutterstock/karelnoppe via THE JAKARTA POST/ANN
While house sales in Indonesia 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, said a survey by Jakarta-based marketing consulting firm MarkPlus Inc.
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.
Last week, senior associate Irfan Setiawan said in a virtual discussion: “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].”
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 per cent year-on-year in the first three months of the year due to the unfolding pandemic, said a recent survey by Bank Indonesia (BI), the central bank.
However, the MarkPlus survey said 10 per cent 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 per cent of the surveyed respondents were still looking for residential property this year.
“Now the consumers are searching and browsing [for homes] online,” 99.co CEO 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 250 and 500 million rupiah ($17,427 and $34,854) or one and two billion rupiah.
Housing developers have also seen a positive trend in sales through online platforms.
Last week, developer Ciputra Group reported that it booked sales valued at 130 billion rupiah for houses with an average price of 250 million rupiah 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 55 billion rupiah in sales for houses with an average price of 2.5 billion rupiah 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.”
Jakarta-listed real estate firm PT Summarecon Agung Tbk (SMRA) reported it still managed to sell houses with prices above six billion rupiah from its project in Bekasi in West Java, said its president director Adrianto Adhi.
“We could survive between January and March, but we recorded a correction in April sales,” Adrianto said in the same discussion.
The marketplace survey said consumers expect a 10 per cent decline in house prices.
In the first quarter of the year, house prices grew at a slightly slower pace of 1.68 per cent compared with growth of 1.77 per cent in the previous quarter, said a BI survey.
THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
