By Anuj Puri, Chairman and Country Head at JLL India
JLL Research’s latest report ‘Is Indian Real Estate Heading Towards A Tectonic Shift?’ examines the transitions that India’s real estate has undergone over the past decade. Among the major trends is how developers have been decreasing apartment sizes to suit affordability of buyers.
Builders are exploring innovative ways to make residential housing across major cities more appealing to potential buyers at a time when it is increasingly becoming difficult to sell expensive apartments. Around the country, builders are emulating the famous sachet marketing strategy adopted by FMCG companies in the late 1990s.
Unable to sell expensive homes in a sluggish market, builders across India are making smaller apartments without lowering the price per square feet and compromising on the quality of product. In the last five years, average apartment sizes falling across all major cities of India. The following chart shows the varying degree of fall in apartment sizes:
Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) – including Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai – witnessed the maximum fall in apartment sizes on annualised basis, along with Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. Other cities also witnessed varying degree of fall in median apartment sizes.
Mumbai, which already had smaller and compact apartment sizes compared to other cities, saw a decrease of 26.4% in the past five years. For the same time period, Bangalore registered a 23.7% reduction in average apartment sizes followed by Chennai at 22.2% and Pune at 7%. Chennai continues to deliver the largest unit sizes today among tier-II cities and Bangalore in tier-I cities.
The dynamics of apartment sizes have a tale to tell – that developers are paying conscious attention to consumers’ requirements. The fall in average apartment sizes across all top seven cities is a clear indication that developers intend to make houses affordable for buyers by reducing average apartment size instead of reducing the capital values. While property prices are not purely a product of developer’s discretion, the decision to alter apartment sizes as per the needs and spending power of buyers is definitely within their ambit.
JLL Research’s latest report ‘Is Indian Real Estate Heading Towards A Tectonic Shift?’ examines the transitions that India’s real estate has undergone over the past decade. Among the major trends is how developers have been decreasing apartment sizes to suit affordability of buyers.
Builders are exploring innovative ways to make residential housing across major cities more appealing to potential buyers at a time when it is increasingly becoming difficult to sell expensive apartments. Around the country, builders are emulating the famous sachet marketing strategy adopted by FMCG companies in the late 1990s.
Unable to sell expensive homes in a sluggish market, builders across India are making smaller apartments without lowering the price per square feet and compromising on the quality of product. In the last five years, average apartment sizes falling across all major cities of India. The following chart shows the varying degree of fall in apartment sizes:
Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) – including Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai – witnessed the maximum fall in apartment sizes on annualised basis, along with Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. Other cities also witnessed varying degree of fall in median apartment sizes.
Mumbai, which already had smaller and compact apartment sizes compared to other cities, saw a decrease of 26.4% in the past five years. For the same time period, Bangalore registered a 23.7% reduction in average apartment sizes followed by Chennai at 22.2% and Pune at 7%. Chennai continues to deliver the largest unit sizes today among tier-II cities and Bangalore in tier-I cities.
The dynamics of apartment sizes have a tale to tell – that developers are paying conscious attention to consumers’ requirements. The fall in average apartment sizes across all top seven cities is a clear indication that developers intend to make houses affordable for buyers by reducing average apartment size instead of reducing the capital values. While property prices are not purely a product of developer’s discretion, the decision to alter apartment sizes as per the needs and spending power of buyers is definitely within their ambit.