India’s urban housing crisis has reached a breaking point, with Mumbai now ranked among the most unaffordable cities in the world for homebuyers.
Average home prices in the financial capital have climbed to nearly 34 times the annual income of a typical buyer, placing Mumbai ahead of global cities such as New York, London, and even Hong Kong in terms of unaffordability.
The scale of the shift is stark.
Sandeep Kulkarni, CEO of Aksha Moneyworks4u, recently noted that when he purchased his first two-bedroom apartment in Mumbai in 2007, it cost just 3.5 times his annual income. Today, that ratio has exploded to 34 times, signalling a deep structural breakdown in housing affordability.
Globally, a house price-to-income ratio between three and six is considered healthy, while anything above ten is viewed as a red flag. By that measure, several Indian metros are already in crisis. Mumbai sits at the extreme end, followed by Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, and Pune, all of which now exceed international benchmarks by a wide margin.
In comparison, Hong Kong stands at around 21 times income, London at 13, Singapore at 11, and New York at nine.
The consequences are already visible. Young professionals are being pushed to distant suburbs, forced into long commutes, or choosing to rent indefinitely. Homeownership, once a middle-class milestone, is increasingly being postponed or abandoned.
Experts attribute the crisis to a mix of speculative pricing, weak wage growth, limited housing supply in prime areas, and high transaction costs. With rental yields in Mumbai hovering around just two to three percent, financial advisors are also questioning whether buying still makes sense.
Unless incomes rise sharply or prices correct meaningfully, the dream of owning a home in India’s biggest cities may continue to slip further out of reach for the middle class.