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House hunting woes in Bangalore

So I’ve been look­ing for a place to buy. My mom thinks I should get “set­tled”. I think it’s a scary word and I have never quite under­stood why par­ents make it the pur­pose of their lives. If chil­dren are happy and con­tent liv­ing their lives the way they want, why put so much pres­sure to con­form to what they (the par­ents) think is the right way to live their lives?

Set­tling down in mom’s dic­tio­nary would mean hav­ing most (prefer­ably all and more!) of the fol­low­ing — house, car, safe, secure job, money in bank, husband/wife, kids (not nec­es­sar­ily in the same order). While I don’t nec­es­sar­ily agree to this def­i­n­i­tion of being “set­tled in life” who’s going to do the explain­ing to my mom? Not me. I do want to live for a few more years :)

So any­ways, I thought that buy­ing a flat might cre­ate a false impres­sion that I am. In the process of set­tling down or close to it. For some rea­son, my mom is also extremely dis­ap­prov­ing of my trav­el­ling and wan­der­ings and she thinks that I should “cut my wings” and sit at home, wait­ing for my old age to set upon me.

So once I put all my hard earned money in EMIs for a flat, I won’t have any money left : to travel! That, for some rea­son, fills her with an enor­mous amount of sat­is­fac­tion. Moth­ers : I’ve stopped try­ing to under­stand them quite a while ago.

So any­way, back to my topic. In a bid to start the set­tling down process, I’ve been house hunting.

Did any­one know that you now need to pay upwards of Rs 3000 for one measly sq feet of space in this city? Who­ever said that all you need is the ground you stand on and all that kind of philo­soph­i­cal blah? That itself is worth thou­sands today.

Unfor­tu­nately and shock­ingly, dur­ing the course of 2 months, I realised there’s lit­tle out there for a poor, sin­gle income, reg­u­lar tax pay­ing (sad­dled with numer­ous loans and out­stand­ing credit card bills might I add) cit­i­zen like me!

Every­where I go, the rates seem to be going through the roof. I’m won­der­ing how hun­dreds of expen­sive flats in a sin­gle com­plex get sold just like that. The bored mar­ket­ing guy (who can blame him, he has noth­ing to mar­ket!) of one com­plex on Ring Road informs me there’s absolutely noth­ing left. Zero. He shakes his head sadly.

Who are these peo­ple buy­ing flats like apples and toma­toes? Who are these peo­ple shelling out 40+ lacs with­out bat­ting an eye­lid? I’d like to meet them and give them a piece of my mind!

I’ve gone to the far reaches of Banerghatta Road : far, far inside : I doubt that these places are actu­ally in Ban­ga­lore. And they quote you some ridicu­lous rate with such a straight face that you come away feel­ing impoverished.

So I have 3 options before me:
1) Win the lot­tery
2) Find that rich uncle who was sup­posed to leave me his tea estate
3) Write a book and get rich

Hmm. The more I look at the three options, the more depressed I get by the minute. Did I say options?

I think I am going to be flat­less and fancy free for a long long time. Though telling my mom that I’m not ready to set­tle down just yet is not going to be easy.

Discussion

62 Responses to “House hunting woes in Bangalore”

  1. Halo to all!!!
    I can prob­a­bly help you peo­ple in buy­ing a house or apart­ment in ban­ga­lore. I am a prop­erty con­sul­tant. Incase you are look­ing at buy­ing or rent­ing any place, please mail me with all the details. Will surely help you
    Mail me @ priyanka.erappa@homebay.co.in

    Posted by Priyanka | July 16, 2008, 12:47 pm
  2. Anita, post­ing a link to this arti­cle rel­e­vant to this dis­cus­sion — it will be use­ful when peo­ple are house/property buy­ing: it cov­ers what is a Khata, what is a sale deed etc.

    ABCs of prop­erty papers

    Posted by Meera | September 12, 2008, 12:44 pm
  3. Wow!!! the truth of any young gen­er­a­tion entry this world out of col­lege. Though the blog is 2 years old it holds good for every­one out there ” Forced to set­tle down”. Me look­ing for a flat from from past 4 years, Still search­ing have not found one, the rea­son every­time i push my lim­its higher the prices have jumped that much higher.That the sad story!!!. It will go on & on till there is a break down. looks like one is fast com­ing. me sit­ting in US can feel it. So all the prospec­tive sin­gle income guys want­ing to buy should have hopes like me. There could be light at the end of the tunnel

    Posted by Ajit | December 31, 2008, 3:07 am
  4. He Guys/Gals Just wait for a Year or so you will see prop­erty prices will decline which are most likely to in the year 1999 :).if you need any help con­tact me on anravindranatha@yahoo.com

    Posted by Ravindranatha | April 29, 2009, 3:48 pm
  5. Well, I came across this blog. Look inter­est­ing. I also feel that TOI is an agent of devel­op­ers and big builders. May be they are get paid to write in Prop­ert Pages “Sub­urs hold the key to growth”, “North cor­ri­dor is the best invest­ment avenue” “See boom in Realty mar­ket after new gov­ern­ment”… Even in the times of deep reces­sion when mar­kets world­wide were at rock bot­tom, and builders were run­ning around to get their loans rolled over, TOI had been writ­ing about the boom in the Realty. I dont read prop­erty pages on TOI for this rea­son. It is a white lie. I think it needs an enquiry to find out the nexus between TOI, builders and under­world (I believe realty is the black money to white money chang­ing avenue for the underworld).

    Posted by Mohan | May 31, 2009, 12:23 am
  6. Hi Anita,

    Nice blog about the house hunt­ing woes.

    Let me also put my obser­va­tions over the decades as a Bangalorean.

    I have seen peo­ple approach­ing me(and my friends) to pur­chase a 30X40 plot near Nagarb­havi in 1996–99, any­thing between 200–300 Rs/Sqft. Now a days ask­ing price is more than 3200 (and some guys quote even 3900) for the same plot. This kind of all rise is hap­pen­ing because of:
    a) Bro­kers usu­ally look for anx­i­ety in buy­ers and inflate the price
    b) Buy­ers are always wor­ried about price hike and will be in a state to pur­chase even for higher price thus push­ing demand.

    Mark­son

    Posted by markson | July 15, 2009, 2:20 pm
  7. good blog site

    Posted by Raju Bhaia | February 19, 2012, 10:26 pm
  8. I have been think­ing of buy­ing a house in Man­ga­lore or Ban­ga­lore. But in both the places the prices are so, so high that, I have started doubt­ing whether I will actu­aly buy a house. And another rea­son is builders ask the money in black and the mar­ket value will be very less than what they charge and that is a prob­lem to apply for loans.

    Posted by BP | April 1, 2012, 11:24 pm

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. […] Here is a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive about liv­ing in India and the chal­lenges of buy­ing a home. Anita Bora won­ders how peo­ple are buy­ing homes in Ban­ga­lore? She finds that she has been priced out of the mar­ket. Do you know what one square foot costs in this city? Rs. 3,000, which trans­lates to about $75 approximately. […]

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