Coronavirus impact | Nearly 90% homebuyers hopeful prices will correct after COVID-19

As many as 60 percent still plan to buy a house within a year

Moneycontrol News

As many as 90 percent property buyers are of the view that prices of real estate will correct after the coronavirus pandemic is over, said a survey by a real estate online broking platform.

According to the survey by 99acres.com, 40 percent of the prospective homebuyers, who were searching flats for purchase before the lockdown, have postponed their plan while 60 percent are still keen to buy within the next 12 months.

Major reasons for delaying their plan to buy were uncertainty in the market (56 percent) and financial factors (30 percent), the realty portal said.

In the survey, 31 percent respondents felt that real estate is still the preferred option to invest followed by fixed deposits (24 percent), gold (24 percent), and stock market (21 percent).

However, a few cities did not mirror the national trends, like Ahmedabad where (31 percent) of respondents preferred stock markets and Bengaluru where (32 percent) of respondents think that fixed deposit is the best investment option in times to come.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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