Pune home sizes grow by 12%, driven by needs & affordability

Pune:
A report by property consultancy firm Anarock said the average size of homes in the Pune metropolitan region grew by 12% in 2020, the second-highest in the country, as affordability and prolonged work-from-home drove demand in the premium sector. The average size of an apartment in Pune was 986sqft in 2020 against 878sqft in 2019. While being significantly smaller than India’s largest average homes in Hyderabad at 1750sqft, it is the second-largest increase in size in India, followed by homes in the Mumbai metropolitan region, where the average size of a home in 2020 was 932sqft.
Overall, average apartment sizes in India grew by 10%, with Anarock claiming that an average home in India was 1150sqft in 2020. Observers said that despite growth in smaller and low-maintenance homes in previous years due to sky-high real estate prices, the pandemic and changes in the work setting is driving real estate buying trends in the opposite direction.
“The two main reasons for apartment sizes reducing in previous years were affordability and millennials’ preference for low-maintenance homes. Keen to generate more buyer interest with smaller price tags, developers whittled down their flat sizes. The year 2020 saw an almost immediate reversal of buyer preferences. With the accent suddenly being on accommodating WFH and learn-from home culture, flat sizes began increasing for the first time in four years,” said Anuj Puri, chairman of Anarock.
Other real estate players said affordability also drove increased demand for larger, premium houses — costing Rs50 lakh and above. Real estate observers Knight Frank had said earlier this month that the state government’s stamp duty cut for the last quarter of 2020 by 3%, coupled with cheap home loans from banks and increased savings, had pushed affordability to its highest in a decade.