To lure more and more first-time home buyers, builders have been reducing the size of apartments over the past few years to make them more affordable. As per a recent report by Knight Frank, the average size of apartments in Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune have reduced between 2014 and 2018.
Owing to the high property prices and unstable market, buyers, especially first-time young customers, have been staying away from the real estate investment. The report states that while Bengaluru saw the apartment size coming down by 7 percent, Kolkata and Mumbai saw a more drastic dip of 13 and 25 percent respectively.
In fact, in the central Bengaluru, sizes of the apartments have reduced by nearly a third and 1-BHKs and studios have gained more popularity.
“Our 2-BHK apartments in 2011 were about 1,200 sq ft but later ones were shrunk to 1,000-1,100 sq ft,” ET Realty quoted Viswa Prathap Desu, senior vice president of sales & marketing at Brigade Enterprises, as saying.
One of the prime reasons for which developers are offering smaller flats is that the average age of consumers has reduced. These target segment has purchasing power but is usually hesitant to make a big investment, but shows an inclination towards smaller places.
To cut down the pricing, developers are also trying their level best to make maximum utilization of the space. They are going back to their drawing boards to rationalize space in terms of design and to make apartments as per the needs of customers.
Like, a variant of a 3-BHK flat with two washrooms rather than three easily shaves off close to 200 sqft. Size of the master bedroom is also now smaller and in many cases, builders are doing away with the dry and cutting down on the size of common spaces, including staircases.
Many realtors are also squeezing out 3-BHKs in the size of its old 2bhk projects. Most of the new project launched in the last three years have flats of smaller sizes.