My friend bought a property in Gurgaon last week – a 3 BHK flat in a 15 year old society at Rs 3.60 cr (and this ain’t DLF!)

I was wondering about the extent to which prices have gone up in the last few years.

What happens to someone who’s starting off in his/ her career and does not have the financial backing of parents?

Will that person be able to buy a house in any of our metros?

The starting price of a small flat is about 2.50 cr. 

Even if one is lucky to have a corpus of 40 – 50 lakhs for downpayment, he would still need to take a loan of 2 cr.

This entails a monthly EMI of more than 1.50 lakhs, which is only possible if the person is earning a gross salary of more than 4 lakhs/ month, translating to a CTC of 50 lakhs!

If it’s difficult today, it’s going to be even more difficult down the line as the yearly salary increments will never be able to match pace with the growth in real estate prices.

This effectively means more than 99% of people entering the workforce will never be able to afford a house in a metro.

What’s the way out?

The best option is to create more jobs outside metros, which is easier said than done.

Another option is to create more work from home opportunities, but this trend seems to be reversing now.

A third option is to let people stay in towns closer to metros and connect them with high speed rail transit systems. 

One such route has recently been inaugurated between Delhi and Meerut which cuts the travel time to 55 mins (the end to end house to office transit time will still be nearly 2 hours). 

What do you think needs to be done?

Imagine the Possibilities!

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