Factors for floor-wise rental price variation
Price in residential apartments vary according to the floor they are situated in. Different cities in exhibit different behavior in price variation depending on various factors of that city or area. The factors which can be
Security: Lower floors are less secure and much prone to crime when compared to the upper floors.
Pollution: Due to traffic, road side activities and activities around the ground floor, the lower floors are more polluted in the terms of air and noise than that of upper floors.
View: Many people consider taking top floors because of the good view of the surroundings. Some are willing to pay even higher price for the same reason.
Accessibility: Lower floors are easily accessible even when the lift does not work. But residents in upper floors will face a huge problem due to this. Evacuation in times of emergency situation will be hard for top floors residents.
Weather, sunlight and air: Top floors are usually 4 to 5 degrees hotter than the rest of the floors. Similarly residents in ground floor have problems with cold weather in winters. Upper floor flats have ample amount of sunlight throughout the day along with fresh circulation of air. The power consumption in top floors and bottom floors vary a lot depending on the season.
Delhi has severe weather conditions in comparison with other cities. So residents on top floors are exposed more to this climate of extreme heat and cold. The whole of New Delhi has been dominantly low-rise development, so there are less number of tall buildings but now due to land scarcity high rise buildings are coming up. The prices of top floors in Gurgaon, Ghaziabad and Noida are less than that of lower floors due to the weather of the area.
Bangalore has relatively cool weather than that of Delhi and Mumbai. Because of this advantage in Bangalore the rental prices in each floor has less variation. The top floors are more costly in Bangalore because the other important factors like pollution and view. The pollution and disturbance at lower floors is very high when compared to top floors. There is a good view provided for the top floor residents which adds as an extra advantage. Rental price of flats in ground and first floors are higher. Mumbai has a reasonably good weather with advantages in both top floors and also in the lower floors. The price variation due to the increase in floors in Mumbai is minimum. However for apartments which are along the coastline and have sea-view, property value becomes high as one move to higher floor.
Another important factor due to which there is variation in rental price of apartments is numerology. 9th floor in every place has relatively higher rental price than that of other floors because many people consider 9 as a lucky number. Similarly 13th floor has less rent compared to other floors. This is the reason many developers and builders avoid numbering the 13th floor as 13, instead of it they number it 14. The prices do not vary much depending on the floor number excluding the two cases of 9 and 13. Other than numerology, the prices vary only because of the above mentioned 5 reasons.
As a sample study we analyzed rentals of 3BHK units based on floor for Whitefield locality in Bengaluru for Q4, 2014 based on Commonfloor Listing Data and found that, rent is highest on 9th floor. There is no significant change in prices from ground floor to 6th floor. All the floors above 9th floor have better price compared to those below 9th floor. This shows that home seekers prefer top floor properties in Bangalore, provided facilities are good. 2nd floor and 3rd floor have least price of all. Due to good weather conditions, to avoid pollution, for good views and security reasons, the demand of top floors is high because of which the price is more than that of lower floors.
