CT Logo

The Indian real estate market is currently experiencing a bull run, marked by soaring prices and escalating demand. At the same time, household incomes across the top 10 cities increased at a CAGR of 5.4%, while property prices surged at a CAGR of 9.3% (between 2020-2024). This growing gap in income and property price growth rates has weakened affordability.

Elaborating on the same, Magicbricks’ flagship report “Housing Affordability in Major Indian Cities” revealed that the Property Price to Annual Household Income Ratio (P/I Ratio) in India has increased from 6.6 in 2020 to 7.5 in 2024 (higher than the globally accepted benchmarks of 5). Based on the P/I Ratio, the report observed that Chennai (5), Ahmedabad (5), and Kolkata (5) are among the most affordable cities for residential investments in 2024, while the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (14.3) and Delhi (10.1) emerged as the least affordable.

Explaining the trends, Sudhir Pai, CEO, Magicbricks shared "Between the latter half of 2021 and 2022, residential investments were at their most affordable. During this period, the market was experiencing a resurgence, characterized by low interest rates, recovering household incomes, and modest increase in residential prices. However, homeownership sentiment has since peaked, resulting in demand significantly outpacing available supply, leading to a rapid and substantial surge in residential prices, presenting new challenges for affordable housing."

Furthermore, the report revealed that the EMI-to-monthly income ratio in India has risen from 46% in 2020 to 61% in 2024, indicating a growing burden of EMIs on home buyers and reflecting affordability concerns nationwide, especially metros. The trend is more pronounced in MMR (116%), New Delhi (82%), Gurugram (61%) and Hyderabad (61%). In contrast, cities like Ahmedabad (41%), Chennai (41%) and Kolkata (47%) are relatively more affordable.

The report concluded that the current situation is likely to hit equilibrium conditions with market trends indicating a deceleration in price growth due to an anticipated increase in residential supply.

Investment Destination

The price-to-annual income ratio across different cities indicates where prospective homebuyers can afford housing.

Affordable ( </= 5)    Un-affordable ( >5, <=8)                  Extremely un-affordable (> 8)

Price to Income Ratio = Property Price*1/ Household Annual Income*2

Affordability indicates the proportion of property price to annual household income. So, if the affordability of a city is 3.7, this means the average property price in the city is 3.7 times the average annual household income.

Magicbricks is India’s No.1 property site

As the largest platform for buyers and sellers of property to connect in a transparent manner, Magicbricks has monthly traffic exceeding 2 crores and an active base of over 15 lakh property listings. Magicbricks has metamorphosed into a full stack service provider for all real estate needs, with services including home loans, interiors, and expert advice.

With 17+ years of experience and deep research-based knowledge, Magicbricks also presents a repertoire of insight-driven platforms like MBTV- India’s leading online real estate YouTube channel, and other proprietary tools so that home buyers can access all information related to price trends and forecasts, locality reviews and more.