While both Bengaluru and Hyderabad feature amongst the top three real estate markets in south India, Bengaluru’s rental housing market has been in the spotlight for reasons ranging from shortage of options to high rental fees, enormous security deposits, bizarre conditions set by landlords, and so on.
Hyderabad’s rental housing market is also fast catching up with that of the IT capital’s in terms of challenges faced by tenants in securing a property, especially for unmarried couples, netizens say.
This was certainly the case for an unmarried couple, who are on a hunt for a 2 BHK rental property in the city with a budget of ₹50,000. The duo took to Reddit to share their story.
“My partner and I have been looking for a house within a 10km radius of Kondapur for a month now. We wanted a 2bhk in a gated society, had a budget of 50k+ maintenance, preferably slightly lower than that. You’d think with a budget like that finding a house shouldn’t be THAT difficult, but alas, we were in for a truly sad surprise,” one of them wrote.
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“Every flat we liked often only wanted MARRIED couples/ families/ vegetarians. We are an inter-religion couple so that already dropped our chances by more than half,” the individual elaborated.
According to local brokers, finding a property on rent for a live-in couple is as tall a task in Bengaluru as Hyderabad, even as landlords in the city are slowly warming up to the idea of taking on unmarried couples as tenants.
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Fellow Redditors sympathised with the young couple in Hyderabad and doled out advice recounting their own experiences.
“Just lie that you’re married. I did that for 3 years,” one user said.
Yet another one opined: “It’s all about the odds. Most ppl don’t want to waste their time by meeting an unmarried couple when they have a line of families who want to rent.”
Brokerage woes
After a month-long agony the duo has managed to zero down on a property but brokerage has emerged as a bone of contention.
“We did finally manage to find a house, I am fighting with the broker about the brokerage amount cuz according to him, it should be charged on the total amount (rent + maintenance) instead of just the rent,” the Redditor explained.
To this, one of the social media users wrote: “How much % of rent+ maintenance is the broker charging. We paid only 50% of our rent as fee 2 yrs back. Also don’t pay anything in advance. Brokerage fee is paid only when the agreement is signed between the tenant and the owner.”
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Local property consultants in Bengaluru who spoke to HT.com said that in a rental property-starved market such as the IT Capital, the standard practice amongst brokers is to charge both rent as well as maintenance worth that of a month as brokerage.
“The reason being, rental agreement in commercial real estate is written as rent to owner and tenant has to manage (the property) themselves. For residential, rent includes actual rent plus maintenance,” explained Manoj Agarwal, founder of Agarwal Estates.
