What Is The Best Bet - Rent Or Buy A Home?

An anatomy of housing rental vs buying economics in India

- Rajat Mishra

The book Happiness Hacks by New York Times bestselling author Alex Palmer, brings out some pertinent factors that make us happy. One among those is to live on rent rather than buy one’s own home.

While this advice may sound strange to most Indians who dream of owning one but looking at the crisis and transformation the real estate sector is going through, Palmer’s philosophy holds currency for sure. With exponentially mushrooming co-working spaces, digital rental platforms like Nestaway, NoBroker coupled with an increasing number of unsold inventories, one cannot deny the sector is witnessing a ripple effect of a consumer behavioural change.

According to data from Anarock Property Consultants’ consumer sentiment survey, there has been a huge shift in the age demography of Indians looking to buy homes over the last two decades. In the late ’90s, most homebuyers were from 45-55 years of age because they would buy a home with savings rather than fully depend on loan. However, in 2019, the trend has changed. Only 36 per of homebuyers are in the 35-45 age group. The millennials are not buying homes and staying in rented accomodation instead.

Amit Agarwal, CEO, NoBroker, says, “Renting has been at an all-time high due to the many changes introduced by the government. Renting does not pin them to any city, or an area and today’s consumer is more on the go.”

According to Delloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019, most millennials are largely experience-driven. Buying a house stands third in their list of priority, after seeing the world and being wealthy.