Chandigarh’s Estate Office clocked a landmark year in 2025, with the UT earning a record Rs 145.67 crore from the auction of 13 properties and registering the highest number of property mutations in the past five years, reflecting both a buoyant realty market and a major leap in ease of governance.

Deputy Commissioner-cum-Estate Officer Nishant Kumar Yadav told The Tribune that Chandigarh auctioned 13 properties in 2025 — 12 residential and one commercial — generating Rs 145.67 crore against a combined reserve price of Rs 67.10 crore. This translated into an excess realisation of Rs 78.57 crore, or over 117 per cent above the reserve price, making it the highest auction revenue year since 2021.

In category-wise terms, residential properties alone fetched Rs 125.30 crore against a reserve price of Rs 52.51 crore, yielding an excess of Rs72.79 crore. The lone commercial property earned Rs 20.37 crore against a reserve price of Rs 14.59 crore. No industrial or mixed land use properties were auctioned in 2025.

Over the past five years, auction activity has been uneven. In 2021, no properties were auctioned. In 2022, the administration auctioned 13 properties — eight residential, two commercial and three mixed land use (nursing home sites) — generating Rs 85.07 crore against a reserve price of Rs 51.98 crore. Residential auctions in 2022 earned Rs 44.79 crore (reserve Rs 28.30 crore), commercial sites fetched Rs 4.16 crore (reserve Rs 3.32 crore), while mixed land use nursing home sites brought in Rs 36.12 crore against a reserve price of Rs 20.36 crore. There were no auctions in 2023 and 2024.

Overall, between 2021 and 2025, the UT earned over Rs 230 crore from property auctions, with 2025 emerging as the single biggest contributor.

In terms of scale, the Estate Office had put 32 properties on auction in 2025 — 13 residential, 17 commercial and two mixed land use sites — of which 13 were sold. In comparison, 35 properties went under the hammer in 2022, while auction activity remained negligible in other years.

The year also saw the highest-ever bids for individual properties in recent times. The top residential bid in 2025 was received for House No. 1388, Sector 33-C, which fetched Rs 33.41 crore against a reserve price of Rs 14.96 crore at the September 4, 2025 auction. On the commercial side, SCO Site No. 8-9 in Sector 8-C was auctioned the same day for Rs 20.37 crore, above its reserve price of Rs 14.59 crore. These figures underline the sustained premium commanded by Chandigarh’s limited land inventory. Officials noted that these auction results complement the city’s broader real estate boom. Chandigarh’s highest-ever registered property transaction — a Sector 9-A bungalow sold for Rs 126 crore in 2025 — continues to remain the top-value land registration in the city, reinforcing the strong demand for prime sectors.

Alongside auctions, property mutations also touched a new high in 2025, with 2,835 mutations recorded — the highest in five years. This included 1,860 residential, 838 commercial and 137 industrial mutations. By comparison, total mutations stood at 2,168 in 2024, 2,544 in 2023, 1,766 in 2022 and just 75 in 2021.

A major driver behind the surge has been the introduction of auto-mutation of properties, rolled out from July 7, 2025, which officials say has transformed what was once a time-consuming task into a seamless, time-bound process. Between July 7 and December 31, 2025, as many as 681 properties were auto-mutated — 386 residential, 245 commercial and 50 industrial and other properties — without requiring buyers to file separate applications or make repeated visits to the Estate Office.

“Earlier, mutation involved lengthy paperwork, uncertainty and multiple rounds of the office. With auto-mutation, the ownership record is updated automatically within a fixed time frame after registration,” said Yadav, adding that the system has significantly reduced pendency, manual intervention and public grievances.

The auto-mutation initiative, the first of its kind in the country, integrates the Sub-Registrar Office and the Estate Office through a digital platform, ensuring instant data transfer, online tracking and automatic acknowledgements. Officials say more than half of the daily footfall at the Estate Office earlier was linked to manual mutation cases, a burden that has now been largely eliminated.