A place of your own: How to decide about buying a home in a big city

More and more Indians are buying apartments rather than living on rent

A decade ago, tenants in key cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Delhi-NCR would rent nine times before buying a home. Today, the younger generation purchases after renting only four to five times, according to NoBroker, a no-brokerage property site.
 

In Bengaluru, the median age of first-time home buyers has dropped from 42 to 34 in three years, with millennials and Generation Z increasingly opting for homeownership over renting.
 

Home shift

One reason for this trend is rising rentals. “With rent surging by over 30 per cent in many major cities over the past couple