Sales bookings of top listed companies are all set to cross Rs 1 trillion in the current financial year, about three times higher than what they did in FY21, analyst estimates said.

The top 11 listed developers clocked cumulative sales bookings of Rs 71,766 crore in first nine months of FY24, according to TruBoard Partners. These firms had posted sales bookings of Rs 34,010 crore in FY21.

“Our initial findings indicate that listed developers have surpassed their full-year FY23 sales bookings within the first three quarters of FY24. Historically, the last quarter typically accounts for 30-40% of total sales bookings,” said Sangram Baviskar, founding member and managing director – real estate at TruBoard Partners. Many developers have revised their targets due the jump in the bookings.

Leading the race is DLF, the country’s largest listed developer, with bookings of Rs 13,315 crore till the December quarter. It is expecting to achieve a total of Rs 22,363 crore in FY24. DLF is followed by Godrej Properties with sales booking of Rs 13,008 crore in the last quarter and expected to hit Rs 18,728 crore in FY24, as per TruBoard.

DLF had crossed its FY24 booking target of Rs 13,000 crore in December quarter of FY24 itself.

Bangalore-based Prestige Estates Projects had initially given a guidance of achieving Rs 16,000 crore worth of sales bookings in FY24, it is confident of crossing Rs 20,000 crore sales bookings mark for the year, said Irfan Razack , chairman and managing director of Prestige Estates Projects.

That will be a growth over of 50% over its last year sales bookings of Rs 12,931 crore, Razack said.

Similarly, Godrej Properties has achieved 93% of its booking value guidance for the financial year 2024 by the end of the third quarter, the company said in its Q3FY,24 investor presentation.

“We will exceed our bookings guidance of Rs 14,000 crore for FY24 and we are confident of also delivering our best-ever year in terms of cash collections and project deliveries,” GPL’s executive chairperson Pirojsha Godrej said in an earnings call with analysts last month.

Property developers and consultants see this boom in sales bookings as customer preference moving towards branded and listed players.

“We have seen a shift in the customer’s preference towards organised and listed players owing to prior concerns of purchasers regarding the credibility of the developers in fulfilling their commitments regarding on-time delivery and quality of the product,” said Razack of Prestige.

Sales bookings of Prestige Estates has been growing at a CAGR of over 50% in the last three years, Razack said , adding that a large part of it is due to the strong latent and new demand in the industry coming on account of a stable and growing economy and rising savings of the professional salaried class, especially the IT Professionals, he added.

“We aspire to grow at a healthy pace over the next few years as well, and shall target a CAGR of 20% in the near-term.,” he said.

Anuj Puri , chairman of Anarock Property Consultants said Grade A developers including the listed developers continue to corner the market.

“Demand, driven primarily by end-users and followed by investors, was mainly focused on projects by Grade A developers, who gained even more market share in 2023,” he said.

More than 63% of the 4.47 lakh units launched in the year 2023 was by branded developers and out of the total sales of 4.77 lakh units in the top 7 cities, the branded developers comprised nearly 60% share, according to Anarock Research.

” This trend is only continuing this year, and buyers don’t mind paying a little extra because their desire to avoid construction-related risks also plays a role,” Puri said.

Today, these developers are unleashing the right-priced, right-sized supply aimed at organic end-user demand. This is the result of intensive market research before pressing the ‘commit’ button and is one of the most notable features of the reinvented Indian housing market, he added.

Bhaviskar of TruBoard said that with macroeconomic factors like robust economic growth, thriving capital markets, and rapid urbanization driving momentum in sales, there’s an undeniable tailwind propelling the residential real estate market forward.

Moreover, underlying themes such as a growing desire among renters to transition into homeownership and a revival  in investor interest are significant catalysts fuelling this growth. TruBoard Research anticipates that this trend will persist, buoyed by continued economic vitality and the interest rate expected to start coming down from FY25 onwards, he said.