'To-let' boards are gone for good in metro cities

Hyderabad: Gone are the days of 'to-let' boards and 'for sale' placards seen before the gates of houses and apartments. Post Covid-19, the residential units are being rented out within hours of posting the ad on online rental platforms across the metro cities in India. This trend is slowly spreading in all tier-1 and tier-2 cities also.

People searching for the residential properties in most of the cities have stopped knocking the doors of real estate brokers. Whether the person is a family man or a bachelor, a student or a working professional, a businessman or an illiterate worker, they are seeking rental homes online. Thanks to smartphone penetration and internet connectivity.

During the pre-pandemic period, the property classifieds were available on online marketplaces like Olx, Quikr, Magicbricks, Makaan, CommonFloor, 99acres and Housing. The Covid-19 has made way for more such players. Now, the time taken to rent a property has reduced significantly as the virtual rental platforms rule the roost in the major real estate markets.

The virtual talking technology is saving the time for both tenants and owners. After the Covid era, there was a huge demand for rented houses with people coming back to work, but the supply was limited. This mismatch in demand-supply ratio led to extreme high pressure on rental pricing in metro cities. The rentals have gone up drastically depending on the proximity to work places and amenities.

"As professionals were flocking back to their work cities from July last year, the demand for properties with good amenities increased up to 100 per cent. Thousands of owners are giving rentals in less than 5-12 hours after posting an ad on NoBroker.com. Now, even the properties are being sold within days of posting the ad on our platform," Akhil Gupta, Co-Founder & CTO of NoBroker.com, told The Hans India.

NoBroker.com is a tech-based brokerage-free real estate platform that participates in the entire user journey starting from the house search to packers & movers, home loans, home painting and cleaning services, legal services and rent pay. With more than 1.8 crore registered users across six cities - Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.

India's first proptech unicorn has observed 18,000 new rental properties rented out in Bengaluru in less than 24 hours post being listed. While the figure stands at 7,000-8,000 closures for Mumbai and Chennai, it was around 5,000 in Pune, and 4,800 in Hyderabad. Around 35-40 per cent of these deals were closed in less than six hours after rental properties are posted.

With all companies adopting a hybrid policy with respect to working from office, employees will be spending a lot of their time at home. This has translated into massive demand for apartments in gated communities with amenities such as power back up. A similar trend, albeit to a lesser degree, is being noticed in the top localities in metros.

NestAway Technologies, Bengaluru-based another home rental platform providing rental solutions via design and technology, also witnessed an upward trajectory in home rentals post Covid. It's Founder & CEO Amarendra Sahu said, "During the pandemic, we introduced the virtual tour, which has helped us clock in more inquiries, leads, and conversion."

"Nearly 25 per cent of the inquiries are via the virtual tour options. It took us nearly 4-5 months of engineering efforts to get the virtual tour up and running. We have recently introduced a 'Rental Bond', which does away with the need to furnish security deposits. Currently, our services are present in 15 cities of the country. We will soon launch our services in tier-2 cities as well," he informed.

According to a study, the demand for rental housing in top cities increased 29 per cent, while the supply declined 12.6 per cent. These cities are experiencing an average rent appreciation of more than 12 per cent over last year. The high demand areas are seeing an increase in the range of 15-20 per cent for Bengaluru and in the range of 12-15 per cent for Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.