In April 2024, the company I worked for asked all its remote employees to return to the office (RTO). They gave us a deadline of two months for this. I had moved to a tier 2 city two years ago, because the same company said remote work is the future.
Moving out was one of the best decisions of my life. Having lived in Bangalore since 2003, I have witnessed the city deteriorate to a point where only a fat paycheck or a misplaced sense of regionalism can make you love what the once Garden City has now become. Locals blame outsiders. The current government blames the previous one. The left wing and right wing blame each other. But is this really the reason for the high rent, dug-up roads, lack of water, and unsolvable traffic jams? Let’s look deeper.
So where does one start when looking for a rental property in Bangalore? Let me list the options first. And then, in Part 2 of this blog post, talk about why each option is worse than the other.
House Hunting Options
You have the following ways of finding a house in Bangalore:
- Approaching a broker
- Approaching a rental management company
- Browsing the plethora of Facebook groups
- Signing up for a paid account on Magicbricks
- Signing up for a paid account on NoBroker
- Looking up free websites like 99Acres, Housing.com, or Makaan
- Scanning your preferred neighborhood for To-Let boards
- Looking for options on your company’s internal messaging groups
Having tried all of these options, I can safely say that there is not one guaranteed approach to land a house. You have to try multiple options and be prepared to go into battle. Why?
The Topology of the Battleground
In any battle, there are a minimum of two sides. Generally, battles are fought because one of the two parties has something to gain, but every battle has a facilitator. A cunning general or statesman who creates the necessary situation for two parties to fight (USA?).
In the landscape of the rental market, the house owner and house seeker are the two parties in the battle. The broker, the politician, and the gossiping neighborhood uncle/aunty are the scheming facilitators of this battle.
For a house owner, renting a house is a simple act of finding a tenant, fixing a price, the terms of tenancy, and sitting back to watch money come into the bank every month.
For a house seeker, renting a house is a simple act of finding a beautiful house in a preferred location and slogging away because house rent is the black hole into which a bulk of your salary disappears.
So who are these cunning people making this difficult?
The Broker
A broker (agent or dealer) makes money from a rental sale from two parties – the house owner and tenant. It is in the broker’s best interest to price the property 5-10% more than the going rate. After all, neither the land, nor the responsibility of owning it, is on the broker. All they have to do is connect two interested parties – and voila, they gets paid 1 months rental from two parties. Why would they make it better for anyone but themselves?
If you see insane house rents in Bangalore, blame it on these brokers. They have no ethics, professionalism, or love for you. They don’t even bother to share good photos/videos of the properties to save you a visit. In my own experience, I have been asked to come to a location by a broker, only to be ghosted. I have been yelled at for not mentioning my requirements clearly. I have watched the same property being priced higher by a broker than the owner on the same rental website. I have read stories how they take an advance and stop returning calls. They will do anything to make a killing.
The Gossiping Aunty/Uncle
These people, usually retired or nearing retirement, have the privileged responsibility of spreading information about who is receiving how much rent in the neighbourhood. Imagine this scenario – it is morning time in a local park. A bunch of senior citizens, who have supposed to have come for a walk – are sitting and talking.
One starts by saying how his property, which he bought for 3 lakhs in 1990, is now worth 3 crores. Another uncle, who is jealous, makes up a story of how he is receiving a rent of 40k per month for his house (which, by the way, has no woodwork, has no car park, and is facing seepage issues). Now it is the turn of another uncle. He has no property of his own. So he makes up a story of how these bachelors living in a house nearby are behaving in an uncivil manner. They party every night. Mixing of genders is common, he says. Uncle seeks pleasure in inducing fear in the mind of his park friends. Yet another uncle – whose kids are well settled abroad and who has no use for rental money – is feeling very left out. So he narrates a story of how his neighbour tenant’s dog is creating a menace in the neighbourhood. He speaks in a baritone about how it barked at a child the other day, and the child ended up with a fever. He, of course, does not brings up the small detail that the same child used a toy water gun to torment the poor dog.
If you think I am making up stuff – you are much out of touch with reality. Because these are situations from life – only rearranged to make it sound like it happened in a park the other day.
After this session of gossip, Uncle X wants to raise the rent of his house by 50%. Uncle Y wants to kick out his bachelor tenant. And Uncle Z vows never to rent to anyone who has a pet. And the other uncle who missed this morning gossip session would anyway only rent out his house to a pure vegetarian who is from one of the upper castes. He is btw, the president of the Apartment Welfare Association.
Don’t believe me? Try mentioning the word ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Pet’ in the same sentence when you speak to a potential house owner.
The Politician
These citizens of India are the most vile and cunning of the lot. The politician I am referring to is not a certain Modi – the default punching bag for all of India’s problems. No, I mean everybody from the local corporator to the BDA chief to the current government’s chief of chiefs – who, by the way, the media is so forgiving of.
These ‘public servants’ have the muscle power to drown the voice of a common citizen. The politician’s job is to prepare the battleground between ordinary Indians who have aspirations. All the controversies that politicians churn out, and which the media loves to cover, is just a decoy. Politicians are the ones who own prime property in the city. While you are busy supporting your favourite party in the upcoming elections, full time real estate businessmen are busy influencing MNCs to ask employees to return to office. They are the ones deciding on the going rate in the important areas. India has been, and will forever be, at the mercy of zamindars. Some just have a side gig as politicians these days.
Despite taxing the IT professionals and IT companies heavily, we get nothing in return. Politicians dole out freebies to other able bodied men and women in return for votes. Of course, this is not the face that they show you. They come with folded hands when seeking votes and promise to fix all your problems which you have been bringing up since the Hubble telescope went into space.
Imagine a city where these people did their job. Apartments would come up only in areas that are well planned. You would not have to drive through narrow roads while negotiating potholes and open drains. Potable water would be flowing through your taps. Yes, there would be traffic because of the sheer density of population, but signals would be synchronised to allow free movement for a longer distance. And, if you lived in ORR, you would not have to fear getting mugged when returning home after the late-night code check-in.
You, the honest tax-paying citizen, can enjoy monsoon weekends from the comfort of your balcony, without having to worry about the neighborhood lake, which your builder encroached upon, breaching. Imagine how beautiful this life could be! You can finally stop scrolling Instagram reels and enjoy reality.
How to Prepare for Battle
Now that we have identified the key elements in the battle ground, let us see how to prepare for war. In the next part, I will talk about the pros and cons of each of the previously mentioned options for house hunting in Bangalore. It is a war, remember? You need to be armed with knowledge to win it.
Till then, you can mull over who really destroyed the city – the locals or the outsiders.