Buying in Mumbai MMR

₹1.5 crore buys about 560 sq ft in Andheri, 940 in Thane West or 1,260 in Kharghar. Rents don't make up the difference.

Across more than 1 lakh listings in the Mumbai region, asking prices fall about fourfold from the island city to Thane and Navi Mumbai, but rental returns barely move: every zone sits between 3.5% and 4.1% gross. The idea that cheaper suburbs pay much higher rents isn't in the data.

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.