New Delhi [India], September 8 (ANI): Real estate's contribution to India's GDP could rise from the current 8-9 per cent to 15-20 per cent by 2047, with expansion across residential, office, warehousing, logistics, education and healthcare segments, although the sector faces several headwinds, Gulam Zia, International Partner and Senior Executive Director - Research, Advisory, Infrastructure and Valuation, Knight Frank, said on Tuesday.

"When we are talking about the contribution of real estate to the GDP going up from 8 per cent to 15 per cent or 20 per cent by the time we reach the 100th year of our independence, the challenges that we are talking about are also multifold," Zia told ANI.

Zia said the real estate industry is currently around USD 600 billion in size and accounts for about 8-9 per cent of overall GDP. He said India has significant scope for growth as the broader economy expands, and should aspire to have a real estate sector worth USD 8-10 trillion when the country's GDP reaches USD 25-30 trillion.

He was speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the National Conference on Real Estate for Viksit Bharat: Enabling Growth, Investment & Ease of Doing Business, organised by ASSOCHAM.

Affordable housing remains one of the biggest challenges for the sector, with organised developers increasingly focusing on the mid-to-upper and premium segments because of higher profit margins. Zia said this shift has left affordable housing largely neglected.

"The organized players, the industry, real estate sector as we talk about has actually moved on to the premium or upper end of the housing because obviously the profit margins are better and the efforts to sell a hundred premium apartment is much lesser than selling the 20 lakh apartments of the same revenue," he said.

He said the office segment, in contrast, remains a bright spot for Indian real estate despite concerns over artificial intelligence (AI)-related job losses.

While jobs associated with older technologies are being affected, new technology-driven requirements are generating fresh demand for offices and skilled professionals.

"The same AI requires lots of those coders and that job, those numbers of jobs are also happening in India. So, we still are job positive, and that's one angle which is making the office sector thrive," Zia said.

Global capability centres (GCCs) are also supporting office demand, while emerging asset classes such as warehousing, logistics, education and healthcare are expanding the overall real estate market.

Zia said the sector's long-term growth could remain in the range of 9-10 per cent annually, despite the cyclical nature of real estate.

Residential demand has also remained resilient. Around 175,000 apartments were sold across the top eight cities in the first half of the year, broadly similar to the corresponding period of the previous year. Zia said the figures did not yet indicate that a downturn in the property cycle had begun.

He also identified capital availability as a challenge, noting that foreign direct investment (FDI) has been shrinking in India for a couple of years, while real estate investment trusts (REITs) still have a long way to go.

Affordability is becoming a particular concern in major urban markets such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, where premiumisation is putting increasing pressure on homebuyers.

Zia said the sector's future growth would depend not only on continued expansion in premium housing and commercial real estate, but also on addressing the affordability challenge and widening access to housing for the common buyer. (ANI)