Sky-high rents make Bengaluru India's hottest residential market

House-hunting in Bengaluru has gotten tougher as home rents have doubled since the beginning of 2022.

India’s tech hub has outpaced bigger property markets like Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, Bloomberg reported today (April 4).

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The covid pandemic had pushed down residential rents. But now IT companies are resorting to their work-from-office policy and calling techies back to offices, which has pushed the city’s rents up by 15-30%, Bloomberg reported.

“Rental demand is rising across the seven top cities,” Anuj Puri, chairman of property consultancy firm Anarock Group, said in a press release.

Moreover, there aren’t enough apartments in Bengaluru. The pandemic-induced economic slump and labour shortage froze construction activities. The city added only around 13,600 residential units in the March quarter, up 3% compared to Mumbai’s 55%, Anarock data show.

The resultant shortage has given Bengaluru’s landlords the upper hand. They are, according to Bloomberg, seeking LinkedIn profiles and résumés of prospective tenants, besides even Zoom interviews.

“Ramyakh Jain...found a two-bedroom rental home for 50,000 rupees ($600) per month in February. It’s one-and-a-half times the rent and only half the size of the apartment he had in New Delhi’s Gurgaon district previously. It took him weeks of scouring the market with the help of as many as 25 estate agents. Even so, he considers it an accomplishment,” Bloomberg reported.

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