Chennai real estate: CommonFloor.com survey
Chennai city recently got listed in “Forbes – Top 10 fastest growing cities in the World”. This comes with no surprise, with the kind of high demand this metro has been witnessing in the recent past.
Recently, CommonFloor.com conducted a survey to determine the buying pattern in Chennai. The survey shows the buying purpose, preferred property type, budget and buying period of the home buyers in the city.
Buying purpose
The survey shows that a large portion of buyers in Chennai are end users. 62% of respondents buy homes for self use. 26% of respondents cited investment as the purpose of buying while the other 12% remained undecided.
The survey clearly shows that Chennai real estate is largely end user driven. Large number of end users mean that the inflow of population working in various IT, manufacturing and automobile industries draw a healthy housing demand in Chennai.
Preferred property type
When the respondents were asked about what type of property they would like to purchase, 48% opted for apartments. Next came land plots with 30% of people opting for it. 16% of total respondents opted for villas and 6% of them opted for other property types like builder floor or commercial.
The survey shows that the concept of gated community has found acceptance in the social psyche of Chennai and apartments are the most sought after type of property in Chennai.
The preference for plots indicates the speculated price appreciation in suburbs like Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), Oragadam and Medavakkam in the coming years. Suburbs in Chennai are expected to play a major role in real estate market in the near future.
The highest preference for apartments also resonates with the pan Indian sentiment as on a national level too, highest share of people, i.e. 63% of people prefer apartments over other property types.
Preferred budget
Highest share of people prefer a budget of below Rs 4o lakh. 30% of respondents prefer a budget of up to Rs 20 lakh and 38% prefer a budget of within Rs 20 lakh to Rs 40 
lakh. 17% preferred a home costing between Rs 40 lakh to 60 lakh. 6% of respondents preferred a budget of Rs 60 lakh to 1 crore and only 4% preferred a budget of above Rs 1 crore. 5% of respondents remained undecided about their budget.
The survey demonstrates that there is a huge demand for the mid segment. A total of 68% of respondents have a preferred budget of up to Rs 40 lakh. The data is similar to the buyers’ preference on a national level as almost 80% of people on a national level prefer a budget of up to Rs 40 lakh.
However, the huge demand for mid range segment may indicate a flux in supply of housing units prevailing in Indian real estate in the near future. The reason behind such speculation is that the housing supply of properties worth up to Rs 3000 per sq ft is set to come down to 8% up to 3rd quarter of 2013 financial year.
Preferred buying period
Respondents were asked to give their opinion about the time period they would like to buy their desired 
property. 35% of respondents said that they decide on a property within two months, 21% of them said they would like to buy within 4 months while 26% opted for the time period of 6 months. 18% of them said they had not decided upon the buying period yet.
The fact that 35% of them have a preferred buying period of 2 months which shows that there is a ready demand in Chennai market for developers to cash in.
However, it is intrinsically related to the fact that most of the buyers are looking for mid budget homes and the supply in the segment may not be adequate to meet the demand.
The CommonFloor.com survey provides an overview of the sentiment and preference of home buyers in Chennai and lets one look at the real estate trends in the city.
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