If you thought India's housing market was booming uniformly across cities, you might have to look twice.
According to NoBroker's India Residential Real Estate Q1 2026 report covering the January–March quarter, India's six major metros launched a combined 1,04,882 residential units across 633 registered projects in the first quarter of 2026. But the headline number flatters a market that is, in the report's own words, "no longer moving in unison."
The starkest divergence is in Hyderabad, which posted the sharpest single-quarter crash across all cities, a 46 per cent year-on-year decline to just 9,700 units in Q1 2026 from 17,874 units in Q1 2025, with zero launches recorded in March.
Just three projects, led by the 52.87-acre My Home Udyan mega-township in Tellapur with 3,343 units, accounted for 75 per cent of the city's entire supply.
This warrants a closer look. 80 per cent of Hyderabad's new apartment supply is 3BHK or larger, with average minimum carpet areas at 2,050 sq ft, the highest of any metro. At ₹8,000 per sq ft, that means entry tickets crossing ₹1.6 crore, and over 84 per cent of buyers with budgets under ₹1 crore reporting affordability stress.
While Hyderabad stumbled, other cities were able to gain some ground. Chennai surged 33 per cent to 6,092 units, NCR jumped 32 per cent to 14,842 units, Pune recovered 28 per cent to 20,427 units after a brutal 2025, and Bengaluru grew 16 per cent to 23,816 units.
Even Mumbai's Metropolitan Region (MMR), which overall contracted 19 per cent to 30,005 units, saw Mumbai City surge 66 per cent. It was Navi Mumbai that collapsed 65 per cent, according to the report.
So, prices are up in places such as Hyderabad and Navi Mumbai, making them almost unaffordable. But there is one silver lining. The RBI's cumulative 125-basis-point rate cut since February 2025 has brought the repo rate down to 5.25 per cent, a 3.5-year low, reducing EMIs by ₹4,000–5,000 a month on a typical ₹60-lakh home loan. This, according to the NoBroker study, combined with developers sitting on unsold inventory, is the best home-buying window since 2021 for end-users with a budget in hand.
