Rental growth in cities moderating after three years

Rental growth across major Indian cities has begun to moderate after three years of sharp increases, with Bengaluru, Pune, NCR, Chennai and Hyderabad recording a slowdown, while Mumbai is bucking the trend this year, according to a report by NoBroker, a realty platform.

“A growing number of Indians are choosing to rent for longer, not merely because buying has become more expensive, but because renting increasingly offers the flexibility and lifestyle they value. At the same time, for many others, renting has become an economic necessity as the gap between home loan EMIs and monthly rents continues to widen,” said Saurabh Garg, co-founder of NoBroker.

According to the report, the average annual growth in rent in Bengaluru has moderated to about 7% from 8% in 2025 and is below the 10–13% range recorded between 2022 and 2024.


In Pune, annual rent growth has moderated to 6% from 7% in the prior cycle and 10–15% between 2021 and 2024. Hyderabad has seen year-on-year growth slow down to 3% from 9%, while Chennai has reported a moderation to 8% from the 9% recorded a year earlier. In Delhi, the average growth in rent this year is under 3%.

Bucking the trend is the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where average rent has increased by around 11%.

According to the NoBroker survey, 75% of the respondents in Bengaluru cited high security deposit as a reason for not being able to move into a home of their liking.

According to the report, Rs 1,26,042 crore is locked up in the form of security deposits with property owners across the top six metros. The largest share of this locked wealth is with the country’s premier commercial and tech hubs. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) leads the charts due to premium rentals, while Bengaluru is driven by steep customary upfront deposits.

The physical distance between home and the office for an Indian tech worker is entirely dictated by the local rent curve.

Investor economics in the rental market are tilting decisively toward compact formats. At the same building and society level, 1 BHKs and studio apartments deliver higher rental yields than larger configurations in every city measured. Bengaluru leads with yields of 4.8%, and Hyderabad follows at 4.6%. The yield curve falls steadily as unit size grows, dropping below 3% for most 4BHKs.

Rent is the single largest line item in most urban tenants’ monthly budgets, and for nearly half of them it consumes more than 30% of the monthly income. The weight of that burden, however, is distributed very unevenly across cities.

Mumbai and Delhi stand out as the cities where tenants carry the heaviest load. In Mumbai, 25% of tenants spend more than half their income on rent, with another 15% in the 41–50% band, meaning roughly four in ten Mumbai tenants direct over 40% of their earnings toward housing.

NCR follows closely, with 19% paying more than half and a combined 25% spending above the 40% mark. Bengaluru presents a more balanced picture. The largest share of its tenants, 46%, keep rent within the relatively sustainable 20–30% band and only 13% cross 40% of their income. Despite its reputation as a high-cost metro, Bengaluru’s rent-to-income ratio remains comparatively moderate, while Mumbai and Delhi push a sizeable portion of their residents into financially stretched territory.