House Affordability in India 2026 — City by City
The same 2BHK costs ₹2.5 crore in Mumbai and under ₹50 lakh in Indore or Lucknow. Compare median prices, rents and tech salaries across 40 cities — sorted costliest first — then open a city for the full buy-vs-rent picture, EMI reality check, and stamp duty and property tax links.
| City | Median 2BHK price | 2BHK rent /mo | Tech salary /mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mumbai | ₹2.5 Cr | ₹75,000 | ₹1,50,000 |
| Gurugram | ₹1.4 Cr | ₹38,000 | ₹1,40,000 |
| Delhi | ₹1.3 Cr | ₹35,000 | ₹1,20,000 |
| Bangalore | ₹1.2 Cr | ₹35,000 | ₹1,30,000 |
| Noida | ₹90 L | ₹28,000 | ₹1,10,000 |
| Chennai | ₹90 L | ₹28,000 | ₹1,00,000 |
| Pune | ₹85 L | ₹28,000 | ₹1,05,000 |
| Chandigarh | ₹80 L | ₹22,000 | ₹90,000 |
| Hyderabad | ₹75 L | ₹25,000 | ₹1,10,000 |
| Kochi | ₹65 L | ₹18,000 | ₹75,000 |
| Kolkata | ₹60 L | ₹18,000 | ₹75,000 |
| Ahmedabad | ₹60 L | ₹16,000 | ₹80,000 |
| Jaipur | ₹55 L | ₹16,000 | ₹70,000 |
| Thiruvananthapuram | ₹55 L | ₹15,000 | ₹70,000 |
| Mysuru | ₹55 L | ₹15,000 | ₹55,000 |
| Ludhiana | ₹55 L | ₹15,000 | ₹32,000 |
| Lucknow | ₹50 L | ₹14,000 | ₹65,000 |
| Indore | ₹50 L | ₹14,000 | ₹65,000 |
| Coimbatore | ₹50 L | ₹13,000 | ₹70,000 |
| Dehradun | ₹50 L | ₹18,000 | ₹50,000 |
| Madurai | ₹50 L | ₹13,000 | ₹31,000 |
| Varanasi | ₹48 L | ₹13,000 | ₹30,000 |
| Vijayawada | ₹48 L | ₹15,000 | ₹35,000 |
| Vadodara | ₹45 L | ₹12,000 | ₹65,000 |
| Surat | ₹45 L | ₹15,000 | ₹60,000 |
| Visakhapatnam | ₹45 L | ₹15,000 | ₹50,000 |
| Bhubaneswar | ₹45 L | ₹16,000 | ₹50,000 |
| Guwahati | ₹45 L | ₹15,000 | ₹45,000 |
| Jodhpur | ₹42 L | ₹13,000 | ₹33,000 |
| Nagpur | ₹40 L | ₹14,000 | ₹55,000 |
| Nashik | ₹40 L | ₹14,000 | ₹45,000 |
| Ranchi | ₹40 L | ₹13,000 | ₹45,000 |
| Agra | ₹40 L | ₹12,000 | ₹28,000 |
| Raipur | ₹40 L | ₹13,000 | ₹34,000 |
| Kanpur | ₹38 L | ₹13,000 | ₹30,000 |
| Bhopal | ₹35 L | ₹12,000 | ₹45,000 |
| Patna | ₹35 L | ₹14,000 | ₹45,000 |
| Rajkot | ₹35 L | ₹14,000 | ₹40,000 |
| Prayagraj | ₹35 L | ₹12,000 | ₹28,000 |
| Amritsar | ₹35 L | ₹15,000 | ₹27,000 |
Figures are city-wide medians researched July 2026 — micro-markets vary widely; each city guide explains the spread and cites sources.
Two ratios do most of the work
The sticker price on its own tells you very little, because salaries and rents move with it. Divide the price by annual income and you get the price-to-income ratio — how many years of gross local pay the flat costs. Across these 40 cities the median is about 7.5 years. The hardest on this measure is Ludhiana at about 14.3 years; the easiest is Hyderabad at about 5.7. Mumbai is not automatically the worst place to buy — it pays better than most of the cities below it, which offsets part of the price.
Divide the price by annual rent instead and you get the price-to-rent ratio, which is the buy-versus-rent question in one number. The median here is about 27. The conventional reading is that below roughly 20 buying is comfortably better than renting, 20 to 30 depends on how long you stay and what your loan costs, and above 30 renting usually wins unless prices themselves rise. Almost every Indian city in this table sits in that middle band, which is why the honest answer to “should I buy?” is usually “how long are you staying?”
Neither ratio counts the costs of owning. Stamp duty and registration take 5-7% of the price on day one, and property tax, society maintenance and repairs run every year afterwards. A price-to-rent ratio near the median only turns in the buyer's favour once the stay is long enough to amortise that one-time 5-7% — which for most of these cities means somewhere beyond seven to ten years.
What you can actually borrow
Indian lenders size a home loan on two limits and give you the lower one. The first is the loan-to-value cap set by the RBI: up to 90% of the property value for loans up to ₹30 lakh, 80% between ₹30 lakh and ₹75 lakh, and 75% above ₹75 lakh. The second is your repayment capacity — most lenders keep total EMIs inside 50-60% of net monthly income, and are stricter than that when the borrower is young or the tenure runs past retirement.
Run both before you shortlist a city. On the median salary in this table, the deposit is usually the binding constraint rather than the EMI, because the 10-25% margin has to be paid in cash on top of stamp duty and registration. The EMI calculator gives you the monthly figure for any price, rate and tenure, and each city guide below applies both tests to that city's own medians.