03_Jan_2021_Annual Report-2

www.bproperty.com REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020



ABOUT BPROPERTY Bproperty is the only real estate solutions provider in Bangladesh and the largest transacting real estate company in Bangladesh. Combining an unmatched online and offline presence with our incomparable database of real estate information, Bproperty caters to the needs of those with real estate queries, whether property search or customization. Bproperty utilizes technology to drive solutions for all stakeholders within the real estate industry with the vision to ensure that all Bangladeshis have access to a trusted and secure transaction provider to give confidence to those engaging within the real estate industry. Bproperty is part of the Emerging Markets Property Group (EMPG), a global market leading real estate conglomerate working across 17 different countries with a combined experience of over 20 years, whose aim is to create strategic and informed real estate marketplaces across the world.

4 REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 MARKET SEGMENT DHAKA

REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 5 BUYER AVAILABILITY & SELLER The real estate market started off with great optimism this year, with a rosy view of the immense scope in the real estate sector. During the beginning of 2020, there was plenty of demand for residential demand in Dhaka, be it for apartments, buildings or plots. Even though this entire year took quite an unprecedented turn, still January had the highest number of added listings for multiple items, reaching 1407 listings in total. However, the uncertainty of the pandemic saw its effects following shortly. April and May witnessed the lowest phase, with extremely low home listings, which is quite obvious considering the lockdown phase everyone was going through. On a brighter side, things started to get better as soon as the government started to ease down the lockdown. When compared between May and June, there had been an impressive growth rate of 657.89% in terms of listings in June. Gradually signs of growth were noticed during August and September but the concern relating to the pandemic situation made a slight impact on the listings during October and November, by a fall of 9.14% and 10.59% respectively. Throughout the entire year, Mirpur scored the highest in terms of drawing property listings, followed by Mohammadpur and Uttara.

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REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 7 PRICE Pricewise, Gulshan consistently remained in the top position in terms of asking price throughout the year. Those who bought residential apartments during April, managed to make the deal with comparatively low asking price, BDT 39,950,000. In May the asking price increased a bit and then again fell during June. January and February were the peak season for Gulshan since the asking price rates were skyrocketing during that moment. However, in spite of the volatile situation, the price rate started to climb from August. After the lockdown was lifted, August and October months performed very well. Given the fact that people were going through cash crunch problems, it is a good thing that the real estate market managed to recover fast through the interest shown by the potential buyers and respective stakeholders. Other than Gulshan, pricewise Baridhara, Banani, Mohakhali DOHS, Paribagh and Uttara also had asking prices in the higher range throughout the year. On the other hand, Agargaon, Badda, Bansasree, Bashabo, Dakshin Khan, Jatra Bari, Lalbagh were some of the areas which had lower range of asking prices, which probably can be considered as good prospects of housing options for those who have been planning to own a house for quite some time. Up until now, ever since the lockdown has been lifted September month witnessed the highest number of listings added.

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REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 9 LOCATION As far as the location is concerned, Mirpur area had the most number of residential listings for multiple items in January, 185. Followed by January, the month of February also generated impressive results but the imposition of the lockdown changed the whole scenario and pretty much all location listings dropped to a significant level. In spite of the lockdown, Uttara and Mirpur remained to be the hotspots for a number of listings added. Throughout the year, January performed best and had the highest number of property listings, which is 1407 in total. The entire real estate situation started to improve June and August onwards, which is most likely due to the fact that everyone was finally getting back to normal life.

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REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 11 DEVELOPMENT On the development front, this year’s fiscal budget played a crucial role in terms of bringing major changes to the real estate sector. If implemented well, the changes have all the potential to drive fruitful results in the real estate sector in the long run. First off, the move towards allowing undisclosed income investment in the real estate sector will surely attract numerous people towards the sector in the coming days. This will also create a huge scope of development and help improve the economic growth of the country. Moreover, the government also introduced and implemented other measures to encourage people towards investing more in this sector. The registration cost has been lowered to 10% from 14%, which will aid greatly in increasing the capacity of investment in infrastructural development. On top of that, the stamp duty has also been reduced to 1.5% in order to reduce the overall registration cost. Last but not the least, the move towards imposing a single-digit home loan interest rate, which is 9%, will undoubtedly impact the decisions of people who will be planning to buy a property in the future. All these major regulatory changes are all made with the sole intention of making this entire sector thrive eventually. After the lockdown phase, the improvements were also visible and are quite self-explanatory through the changing behavior pattern of the property buyers and sellers.

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REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 13 PROPERTY DETAILS Out of all the residential properties listed in this year, 3 bedroom apartments ranked in the top position, especially in January there has been 1027 listings added in this category. The listings of such apartments continued, standing at 751 listings in February and 413 in March. April onwards the situation got critical and remained that way throughout May. In June the market situation changed, and reported 275 new apartment listings, projecting a 86.9% improvement. Even in August there have been 514 listings, followed by 746 in September and 638 listings in October. Floorwise, 905 listings were added in 2020 for first floor apartments, implying the preference of the majority of the people. In general, first, second and fifth floor apartment listings remained in the top section. Digging deeper, Uttara, Mirpur and Mohammadpur were the areas a good portion of listings belonged to. Under the completed projects, January was noticed to have 20.57% of completed projects, which was the highest in this year. The completion of projects became nearly impossible due to the lockdown and hence from March the number of completed project listings decreased and reached a stagnant stage in April and May. Situation started to improve from June and up until now September month recorded the most number of listings ever since the lockdown has been lifted. Based on the current scenario and the pace at which everything is moving, it probably will take a while for things to get back to normal.

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REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 15 DEMAND Even though the real estate market and its operations almost came to a halt due to the lockdown phase, yet in spite of all of these the maximum number of residential leads in Dhaka were generated in August, 5358. Overall, August and September months had the highest number of leads compared to other months. April saw a huge decline in the number of leads generated and had a negative growth of 27.84%. Fortunately, lifting the lockdown helped tremendously, since the growth level in June reached 50.72%. The three major locations which were highly preferred by the leads were Uttara, Mirpur, and Bashundhara R/A. Based on the statistics, Mohammadpur, Purbachal, Dakshin Khan and Banasree also projected good potential in the number of leads. Budgetwise, everyone had a tendency to go for residential properties lying under the range of 30 lakhs, especially in Uttara, Mirpur and Bashundhara R/A. As per the data, 3 bedroom apartments were highly desirable throughout the entire and in almost every location. Bedwise, August had the most leads for 3 bedroom apartments and April being in the least category. In October, apartments ranging from 30 lakhs to 40 lakhs got 284 leads, which might imply that people were gradually willing to spend on real estate. The willingness to spend more on real estate reached about 60 lakhs in November, helping the sector gain its momentum on a rapid level. 22.1% of the residential leads were primary in nature, while the rest of them were secondary. Though the scenario was quite optimistic during the beginning of the year, the lead number fell a bit during April and May. Right after things began to get normal, the lead numbers also started to rise. During August and September lead generation of both primary and secondary were ahead compared to other months. August solely received 12.75% residential primary and secondary leads in 2020, out of which 779 were from Uttara, 669 from Mirpur and 662 from Bashundhara R-A.

16 REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 TENANT & LANDLORD

REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 17 AVAILABILITY The tenant and landlord segment under the real estate sector has been greatly hit by the pandemic this year. The situation was quite stable during the beginning of 2020, but the lockdown really took its toll on the tenant and landlord side and left plenty of apartments empty due to the severe economic crisis in the country. In April there was a sharp decline of 99.14% in the number of residential rental apartment listings in Dhaka, compared to the previous month. Gradually from the month of June listing growth improved massively, reaching a level of 1642.93%. Since then, we could finally see the ray of hope as the listing numbers kept on increasing from August. October did not generate that many new listings, the set momentum was forwarded slightly as even 3% more homes became available for rent in the month, reaching nearly 14,000. Mugdapara saw an unusual influx of rental units in October as it added about 650 new properties to Bproperty database. Mirpur remained to be the undisputed king in terms of rental availability as nearly 3000 units became available for rent in October, constituting about 20% of total listings added. Growth wise, September recorded a growth rate of 33.33% compared to the previous month; but in terms of total listings, November recorded the highest with 14353 residential rental apartments.

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REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 19 PRICE & LOCATION 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone. Especially those who were residing in rental apartments while being jobholders or students had to go through a lot of difficulties. The impact of lockdown took the most toll on rental apartments in the month of April. Only areas like Nikunja, Tejgaon and Uttara had high average prices during the month, when other areas were not having much demand for residential apartments. Areas like Bashabo, Mugdapara, Khilkhet and Kadamtala were some of the areas which had reasonable average asking prices compared to the other areas. A great number of rental apartments were vacant during May and June since a large number of people decided to shift to more affordable places or moved out of the city to cut down expenditure. April and May suffered the most due to having low average prices. But as soon as the economy started to recover, everyone gradually came back to their normal life and an increase in the rates of rental apartments was noticed. During the month of September, areas like Mirpur, Pirerbag, Kallaynpur, South Banasree, Ibrampur and East Rampura had the greatest number of vacancies. This might be due to the fact that people were in search of reasonable apartments as they were slowly returning to normal lives. Throughout the year, Gulshan, Baridhara, Mohakhali DOHS remained to be the expensive zones. Gulshan had the highest average asking price in January, being Tk 133831. The price decreased in the following months though, and eventually started to pick up from June onwards. During October, availability of rental units ranging between Tk 10000 to Tk 20000 was noticed, out of which around 61% of the listings fell within this rent range. Overall considering the price and location, the lowest number of average asking prices were recorded in October, which was around TK 16210.

20 REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 PROPERTY DETAILS The year started off with 10433 rental apartment listings in January for different sorts of bed requirements. Out of all the listings, 2 bedroom and 3 bedroom were highly desired by people. This data can be an indication of the fact that homes for mostly small to medium sized families came onboard. In February the bed listings decreased 14.49% and continued to fall in March and April as well. The lowest bedwise apartment listings came in April due to the lockdown enforcement and the presence of a vulnerable situation where both the landlord and tenant fell in great dilemma regarding the whole situation. June saw a spike in the apartment listings, mostly for homes which had 2 bedrooms. In August there has been 55.55% growth in apartment listings compared to June. The total number of listings which came in August, had 55.33% requests for 2 bedroom apartments. During January 5439 apartment listings, which was around 52.13% of the total listings were for 2 bedroom apartments. 2 bedroom apartments kept on leading the rental apartments throughout the year. Areas like Uttara and Mirpur were most sought after for 2 bedroom apartments. In case of rental apartments, apartments which were under 1000 square feet had the most demand. Mirpur area alone had 1895 listings for apartments below 1000 square feet, followed by Mohammadpur which had

REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 21 888 listings. In October and November, Uttara came in second position after Mirpur in this category. Mirpur DOHS of the Mirpur area is the most sought-after location for rental units in October while Sector 11 is the most demanded from the Uttara area. Mirpur and Uttara combined constituted over 900 property requests, which is about 26% of total requests generated in October. Bashundhara R/A, Mohammadpur, and Badda continues to be a significant part of tenants’ focal point as the rental landscape continues to hold steady for the time being. Floorwise, third and fourth floor apartments dominated the entire rental property listings. Around 16.55% of the floorwise listings got added in the entire year, which were for fourth floor residential apartments. Monthwise, listing requirements overall increased from September and reached the peak point in November. Even in the case of completed projects, 16.6% reached the stage of completion in November. In April, only 59 completed project listings got added, making it fall under the least category. The scenario is quite self-explanatory though, since April month went through the most critical phase in the whole year due to the onset of pandemic. Nevertheless signs of improvements were seen in June and managed to close 13108 completed listings in September, 13354 in October and 13750 in November. The projects which were under construction resumed their operations and got added in the listings in greater numbers from the month of August. Comparatively, completed projects projected a growth rate of 99.73% in May and under construction projects reached 62944.43% growth during November.

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REAL ESTATE YEARLY UPDATE 2020 23 DEMAND of the leads were generated in total, with 561 from Uttara, 465 from Mirpur, 319 from The demand for rental apartments were Mohammadpur, 304 from Bashundhara R-A. in the peak position during February, when this single month generated 2564 Considering this year has been tough for leads simply for the residential listings in more or less everyone, budget was definitely Dhaka. In March the leads number fell 13.96% the primary concern. Thus budget-wise but again picked up during May. Things apartments with rent between Tk 10000 and needed a bit of time to stabilize and from Tk 15000 were mostly preferred by people. August onwards a ray of hope returned in In most of the cases it has been noticed that this domain. The maximum number of leads landlords were reluctant to waive the rent after everything resumed was reported in as a result a large number of middle income the month of August, which was 3734 leads, and low-income people faced hard time and 14.15% of the total respectively. became worried about paying their monthly house rent. Things took time to change Majority of the people were interested and rental leads started to come in greater in rental apartments in areas like Uttara, numbers from June. In August, the number of Bashundhara R-A, Mirpur and Mohammadpur. total leads with various budget preferences Out of all these areas, Uttara remained in the stood at 3734, from which 1037 leads wanted leading position for rental leads generation, to have an apartment with Tk 10000 to Tk with 13.8% lead generation in the month 15000 rental expenditures. August when compared to the entire number of leads generated from Uttara. Areas like In September, those who came with Tk 10000 Badda, Banasree, Dhanmondi, Khilgaon, to Tk 20000 budget preference, emphasized Kalabagan progressed greatly in terms more on areas like Uttara, Mohammadpur, of driving leads throughout the year for Mirpur, Bashundhara R/A and Badda area. Bproperty. In 2020, around 14.15% share During October, 954 lead requests came for apartments with a budget preference of less than Tk 10000, out of which Mirpur had 170, Badda 110 and Uttara 102 requests. Apartments with rent between Tk 20000 - Tk 25000 increased from October. Bedwise, 2 bedroom apartments took 47.7% of the share under the residential leads in Dhaka in 2020. Generally the demand for 4 bedroom and 5 bedroom apartments remained in the lower range throughout the year. The economic crisis due to the pandemic might have been a major issue in determining the reason behind people mostly going for 2 bedroom apartments instead of 4 or 5. From January to March the situation was quite stable and every month the number of leads generated hovered around 2200 to 2500 approximately. After the decline faced during April and May mostly, numbers ticked up from June. Overall, August has been the best performer in terms of bedwise number of leads by reaching 3733, which is around 14.15% of the total leads driven throughout the year. Bashundhara R/A, Mirpur and Uttara were the three major areas which led to such growth in led numbers during August.