Buying in Bengaluru

Rent or buy? In five Indian cities, it comes down to one race: house prices against your investments

We ran a rent-vs-buy model on real asking prices and rents in Gurgaon, Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. With rents at roughly 3% of prices, buying only wins if home prices grow about as fast as your investments would. Here's the grid, city by city.

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

A Bengaluru couple asked Reddit whether to take a ₹1.8 crore loan for a ₹2.7 crore J P Nagar flat. On their reported finances the EMI is comfortable. But at ₹15,000 per sq ft, the price sits above three-quarters of asking prices in that pincode. Here's the full working.

Whitefield asks a third more per sq ft than Bengaluru as a whole, and a 'loading' of 1.38 can turn ₹12,500 into ₹17,250. How to check the real price.

Whitefield's median asking price is ₹12,912 per sq ft, against ₹9,791 for Bengaluru's localities as a whole, and rents return about 3% a year. Here's what neighbouring localities ask, how carpet loading changes the price you're quoted, and the upfront costs Karnataka now charges.