Housing Affordability: 81% of Buyers Balk at 50% Price Surge

Team L&M

Skyrocketing home prices across cities have been a major pain point for Indian home seekers over the past few years – but there are notable exceptions, reveals the ANAROCK Consumer Sentiment Survey for H1 2025.

“City-wise trends indicate that while residential property seekers across cities are extremely concerned about the rising prices in their respective cities, MMR has emerged as a surprising outlier,” says Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Group.

“In India’s most over-the-top expensive real estate market, just 39% of our respondent property seekers expressed high concern about the steep prices in the region. The remaining 61% have equally surprising takes – 20% are not at all concerned, and 41% only moderately so.”

MMR has near-matchless market fundamentals, long-term capital appreciation driven by lack of land, the highest annual inward migration in the country, and constant infrastructure upgrades. “However, such a high level of buyer confidence is still interesting in a region with the highest average housing prices across all Indian cities,” says Puri.

Everywhere Else – A Major Concern

Nevertheless, the currently blowing global headwinds have left their mark, and several respondents admit that their homebuying decisions have been affected. The survey finds that rising home prices are a major concern for over 81% polled property seekers across India.

This stands to reason – ANAROCK Research finds that the top 7 cities have seen average residential prices rise by over 50% in the last two years (from INR 6,001/sq.ft. in Q2 2023 to INR 8,990/sq.ft. by Q2 2025.

Affordable Housing

The survey further highlights that:

• 62% aspiring buyers of affordable housing are dissatisfied with the current available options in the market.
• 92% of these are unhappy with the project locations.
• 90% state that these projects are of low construction quality and are ‘poorly designed’.
• 77% respondents find the unit sizes too small to be of utility and interest.

“These findings dovetail disturbingly with the documented demand contraction for affordable housing, or homes priced at or under INR 45 lakh,” adds Anuj Puri. “According to ANAROCK data, it has shrunk to just 17% in H1 2025 from 40% back in same period in 2020. Concurrently, new supply of affordable housing has nosedived in the last two years across the top 7 cities – from 18% in H1 2023 to just 12% in H1 2025. Back in 2019, its supply share was 40% of the total new launches.”

Budget Preferences

On this front, the H1 2025 survey represents a marked trend reversal over the H1 2024 survey:

• INR 90 lakh to INR 1.5 Cr has emerged as the ‘most favoured’ option for over 36% of prospective homebuyers – indicating a stronger shift towards premium and luxury properties.
• 25% prefer homes priced between INR 45 lakh and INR 90 lakh.

Ready-to-move-in Vs. New Launches

The H1 2025 survey finds that demand for RTM homes is declining – and is, in fact, at the lowest end of the preference chart. As of H1 2025, the ratio of demand for ready homes against new launches stood at 16:29, against 20:25 in H1 2024. This is a complete trend reversal compared to H1 2020, when the demand ratio stood at 46:18, and H1 2021, when it was 32:21.

End-users Vs. Investors

The survey also highlights that more than 65% of the polled prospective buyers are entering the market as end-users, with investors appearing to be taking a measured pause. A deep dive into city trends indicates that among all cities, Bengaluru has the largest share (43%) of buyers seeking property specifically for investment; the remaining 57% are end-users. The survey indicates that Delhi-NCR has the lowest share of investors at 26%, with 74% seeking to buy as end-users.

Other Major Highlights

• 63% of respondents pick real estate as the ‘most preferred’ investment asset class – a 4% increase over the previous year’s survey
• 70% millennials & 46% Gen-X respondents intend to use their investment gains for purchasing a home soon