The Bengaluru couple on Reddit can afford their ₹2.7 crore flat. The price is the real question.

In September 2025, a 30-year-old IT professional asked Reddit whether he and his wife should buy a flat in South Bengaluru. Business Standard reported the details: a ₹2.7 crore, 1,800 sq ft, eight-year-old three-bedroom flat in J P Nagar, in a gated community with a metro station within walking distance, bought with a ₹1.8 crore home loan.

The top response summed up the debate: you can afford this home, but is it worth ₹2.7 crore? We ran the numbers on both halves of that.

First: a ₹1.8 crore loan is not a ₹1.8 crore flat

Headlines about this case talk about "₹1.8 crore", and it's easy to read that as the price. It's the loan. The flat costs ₹2.7 crore, and the couple planned to put down nearly ₹90 lakh towards the price and costs.

That difference matters. For loans above ₹75 lakh, RBI caps the loan at 75% of the property's value. A ₹1.8 crore loan on a ₹2.7 crore flat is 66.7%, within the limit. But if a flat itself cost ₹1.8 crore, as an illustration, the loan could be at most ₹1.35 crore, needing at least ₹45 lakh down.

What the couple reported

Everything here is as reported by Business Standard, from the original post. We haven't added anything:

• Household income of ₹5.1 lakh a month: ₹4 lakh his, ₹1.1 lakh hers.
• Household expenses of about ₹60,000–70,000 a month.
• A ₹20 lakh emergency fund, plus another ₹20 lakh set aside to cover 15 EMIs.
• ₹18,000 a month in rent from a flat in his hometown.
• Current rent of ₹35,000 a month.
• No plans for children for three years. They want to keep their equity and mutual fund investments untouched.

Can they afford it?

On these numbers, comfortably. In our illustration at 9% over 20 years, the ₹1.8 crore loan has an EMI of ₹1,61,951. That's 31.8% of their combined income. After the EMI and ₹70,000 of expenses, about ₹2.78 lakh a month is left.

The stress test that matters for them is a job switch, a move abroad or a career break, the worries they raised themselves. If only his ₹4 lakh came in, the illustration still leaves about ₹1.68 lakh a month after the EMI and expenses. The ₹20 lakh EMI buffer would cover more than a year on top of that. Affordability isn't the problem here.

Is it worth ₹2.7 crore?

By our calculation from the reported figures, ₹2.7 crore for 1,800 sq ft is ₹15,000 per sq ft. Some Reddit commenters argued comparable three-bedroom flats in the area sell for ₹1.8–2.3 crore. Our listing data points the same way.

In the Gulmohar Atlas, pincode 560078, which covers J P Nagar III Phase, has a median asking price of ₹9,593 per sq ft across 221 listings, and three-quarters of listings ask ₹14,456 or less. This flat asks more than that.

That doesn't make it a bad buy. A well-kept gated community next to a metro station can deserve a premium over a pincode median that includes older, smaller and less convenient homes. But it means the premium should be a deliberate choice, and worth negotiating on. A 10% reduction on ₹2.7 crore, as an illustration, is ₹27 lakh.

Renting the same flat instead

The couple's other option is to keep renting. Using the pincode's median asking rent of ₹30.7 per sq ft a month, a flat of the same size would rent for about ₹55,000 a month in this illustration. Compare that with what ownership costs that isn't building equity:

In the illustration, the first year's interest alone averages about ₹1.34 lakh a month, well over twice the rent for a comparable flat. Principal repayments (the rest of the EMI) build equity, so that comparison isn't the whole story. Whether buying pays off depends on how long they stay, how prices move and what the ₹90 lakh down payment would earn if invested instead. Our rent vs buy guide works through that.

The Reddit thread's own conclusion holds up: if they plan to stay 15–20 years, buying can make sense; if a move abroad is likely, renting keeps their options open. Either way, the asking price is worth challenging before they sign.

To test your own assumptions, use the free rent vs buy calculator.