Dreaming of a home in Mumbai or Gurugram? The market may be rigged against you

When a software entrepreneur bought a penthouse in DLF Camellias in Gurugram for ₹190 crore, the surprising bit was not that it made news, but the matter-of-fact nature with which the news was received. Camellias, along with its sister-properties like Magnolias, are no stranger to big-ticket luxury flat sales, the ₹100 crore for a flat (just a shell, mind you, with no furnishings or interiors) mark having been breached long ago.

The worrying bit now is that what was considered an exception is now becoming the rule. Drive down Gurugram (formerly ‘Gurgaon’) on the outskirts of Delhi, and you will encounter residential properties, old, new and upcoming, galore, but none that will fit an average Indian’s budget. In fact, it will not be hyperbole to state that an average two-bedroom apartment in a legal development would come for nothing short of a couple of crores.

And more disturbing, it is not Gurugram alone. Across India’s biggest urban pockets, the property market is zooming up, up and away, fuelled by a boom that is fast resembling a bubble. After all, when cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad and of course, Gurugram virtually have apartments on offer only in brackets running into crores, the question begs to be answered — what about middle-class Indians and their dreams of owning a home? And also, who are buying up these apartments costing multiples of crores?

The answer to the second question, if you go by various real estate agents and sources in the market, will shock you.

No one, really.

As Navin Duseja, a real estate entrepreneur and influencer, recently commented, “The (Gurgaon) real estate market wasn’t driven by homebuyers; it was driven by speculators — instead of buying homes to live in, people booked (paying) 10pc down payment….then flipped them before construction finished.”

“Real estate cannot survive forever on investors selling to other investors,” he added.

The Supreme Court last year called this speculative buying trend in prime real estate in the country as ‘slow poison.’

It seems lessons have not been learnt. India had earlier seen this kind of speculative real estate activity driving up prices and then leading to a bubble burst, back in the early 2010s. In fact, certain states like Maharashtra, which determine laws for India’s priciest real estate market, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), now have safeguards in place, whereby those who book residences have to pay up not just an advance, but stamp duty, registration and other costs upfront (unlike in Delhi NCR).

“The sharp rise in residential prices across Gurgaon has certainly raised questions around market sustainability,” said Avneesh Sood, director of leading realty company Eros Group, “Affordability has become a genuine concern, with premium housing dominating new launches and limiting options for the broader middle-income segment.”

That is the ultimate irony of it all. Even as tens of thousands of Indian families look for a home to call their own, the inventory they are offered is almost solely of premium or luxury residential units, like the multi-crore new developments in places like Mumbai, Bengaluru or Hyderabad.

Affordable housing, or homes costing less than ₹50 lakh, made up half of what was on offer from real estate companies a few years ago. Today? They are less than 17 pc.

Realty companies saw the boom in housing post-Covid, when many professionals got flush with new jobs and salary hikes and an awareness that owning one’s own house was crucial in those pandemic situations — and went hunting for homes. The realtors realised the bigger margin in offering them premium housing units, what in the industry is termed a ‘high value, low volume’ cycle, and as there were takers then, most of them pivoted into that category.

As home interest rates got cut in early 2025, this spurred added interest in land and housing — some 4.5 billion dollars of investment is estimated to have gone into Indian realty just in the first half of 2026.

But now, as IT job cuts and the sobering of the economy post AI, oil hikes, tariffs and wars thinned the purchasing power of actual buyers, speculative buyers, or investors have stepped in, keeping up the bubble. But the question is, for how long?

“Affordability is becoming challenging,” admits Rohan Khatau, director of CCI Projects, a leading Mumbai real estate company, but interjects, “But it is certainly not a bubble. Much of the price rise is a result of end-user demand and an increasing share of wallets being allocated towards housing. Homes priced above ₹1 crore now account for a larger share of residential sales, indicating that buyers are increasingly willing to allocate a greater share of their wallet toward better homes, locations and amenities.”

Can India’s salaried professionals maintain having an even bigger portion of their salaries going into EMIs, especially in a job market that is volatile? Or will a market correction (some realtors are speaking of a ‘time correction’, whereby they will freeze prices without any hikes, all in the hope of ensuring that prices don’t at least drop) set things right?

Already, high prices are seeing Gurugram properties in limbo, with many investors unable to flip them the way they thought they could, even as unsold stock in MMR (Mumbai), India’s most expensive real estate region, is now at 3.11 lakh units— the highest in the country. Many of these would be in that premium or luxury category. This, even as Knight Frank estimates the shortage of affordable housing in the country at close to one crore housing units.