Rent or buy?

The numbers to start with

From Rent or buy? Start with one number: what rent is as a share of the price. Each figure is sourced or marked as an illustration there.

• 2.7% to 3.8%
  Median gross rent as a share of asking price a year, across the five Atlas cities
  Source: Gulmohar
• 2.5×
  Year-one loan interest on a Gurgaon median flat, compared with the year's rent
  Illustration
• 12 years
  Years until buying overtakes renting for a Gurgaon median flat, if prices rise 7% a year and the renter earns 8%
  Illustration

Read in this order

1. 1
   Recommended first read

   Rent or buy? Start with one number: what rent is as a share of the price

   A flat with a median asking price of ₹1.43 crore in Gurgaon rents for about ₹31,900 a month, roughly 2.7% of the price a year. A 9% loan on three-quarters of it costs about 2.5 times that in interest alone in year one.

   Buyer Guide · 3 min readRead this first →
2. 2

   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.

   Market Analysis · 4 min read
3. 3

   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.

   Buyer Guide · 4 min read

The other decisions

• 1. Should I buy a home at all?
• 3. How much can I afford?
• 4. Is the asking price fair?
• 5. What should I check before paying?

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