The homebuyers’ category is now dominated by the mid-thirties age group.
New Delhi: Gone are the days when people from their mid-forties dominated the homebuyers’ category. Ever since the easy availability of home loans, the homebuyers’ category has been dominated by the mid-thirties age group, according to a recent survey conducted by ANAROCK property consultants.
The survey said that there has been a “tectonic” shift in not just the overall buying pattern, but also in the age of property buyers. According to ANAROCK’s survey, 37% of the participants who were looking to buy homes belonged to the age group 35-45 years, while 25% of such homebuyers belonged to the age group 45-55 years. And those in the age group 25-35 years constituted 20% of homebuyers in India.
Young homebuyers dominate mostly in the metropolitan cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Hyderabad. In Bangalore, over 50% of the home buyers are in the age group of 35-45 years and for Mumbai, it is a little less than 40%. Pune has about 48% young home buyers and Kolkata about 38% home buyers in the 35-45 years category.
However, in Hyderabad, the age group of property buyers is even lower. Most number of properties in the city of Hyderabad is owned by people from the 25-35 years age group. However, in Delhi-NCR, the age group of property buyers still remains at the higher age bracket of 45 to 55 years and this, experts say, is because of the rising cost of property in the Delhi-NCR region.
This trend of the younger generation looking to have a fixed asset in terms of their “own” home began from the late 2000s when the availability of home loans became easier and home buying also attached a lot of tax benefits.
Prashant Thakur, Research Director, ANAROCK Property Consultants, said, “During this period, winds of change blew and the age bracket of property buyers began to drop, coming down to 35-45 years. Home loans were readily available, and homebuyers warmed up significantly to the notion of using borrowed funds rather than depleting all their savings. The fact that home loans also carried attractive tax benefits certainly helped, too.”
“In this period, banks and other lending institutions also began to re-strategize their approach, and youth became the target audience. The availability of finance became the key driver for this change. And millennials predominantly favoured paying EMIs for buying a home over the ‘dead’ expense of rentals and the ranks of this vital age demographic swelled steadily till about 2015-16,” Thakur added.