Bengaluru saw steepest rise in rentals in 2023. Landlords hiked rents by 30%, find surveys

Other cities such as Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata have witnessed a 9 percent to 14 percent increase in rents. (Representational image)

Bengaluru experienced the steepest rise in rentals in 2023, two independent surveys have found. Rents in the city's Bengaluru’s prominent areas soared by over 30 percent, according to No Broker's Real Estate Report 2023 and consultancy firm Anarock.

Seven percent of landlords in Bengaluru and Mumbai increased rents by more than 30 percent in 2023, No Broker stated, adding that 52 percent of the landlords surveyed in Bengaluru rely completely on their income from rents.

On the other hand, as per Anarock's report, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune have seen maximum rental hikes in the first nine months of 2023. According to the consultant's findings published by the New Indian Express, a standard 2BHK flat of about 1,000 square feet area in Bengaluru’s Whitefield witnessed rents grow by 31 percent while rents for such homes in Sarjapur increased by 27 percent.

Explaining the sudden and steep rise in rents, Saurabh Garg, co-founder and chief business officer of No Broker, told Times of India that the Covid pandemic affected the supply of residential properties. “With more people entering the city, and fewer spaces available, rents have gone up in Bengaluru. In 2023, the Indian real estate sector witnessed robust growth in terms of increasing demand for property buying, surging rentals, and soaring property prices, especially in Bengaluru,” he said.

Garg added that the gap between demand and supply would eventually reduce and result in a more controlled increase in rents.

Speaking in a similar vein, Anuj Puri, chairman of Anarock Group, was quoted by the New Indian Express as saying, “We may now see rental values begin to stabilise in most cities in the ongoing quarter as renting usually remains low in the last quarter of the year… Rents will once again build up steam when renting picks in the January to March period as this is when Indians usually relocate for better job opportunities amid increased hiring in the new financial year."

The increase in rents in other cities such as Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata has been between 9 percent and 14 percent, the company added.

Bengaluru's steep rise in rents was a hot topic of discussion on social media with stories of bizarre experiences coming to the front this year. A potential tenant was rejected by a landlord because he scored 75 percent in his Class 12 board exams. The landlord had sent the benchmark at 90 percent. In another "Peak Bengaluru" moment, a woman shared her landlord's formal "offer letter" after appearing for an "interview".

In March, a man working at Google failed to crack an interview with a Bengaluru landlord. Ripu Daman Bhadoria moved to the city from Seattle in 2022 and was faced with stiff competition while trying to rent an apartment.

"I cleared the Google interview but failed the tenant interview in Bangalore," he wrote. "That was a moment of awakening for me as I realized that there are harder interviews to clear than Google".

Read more: Bengaluru family forced to move out of flat after landlord increased rent by Rs 18,000