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Koramangala man hunting for flat told Cooke Town 3BHK is ₹1 lakh: ‘Have people lost their minds?’
Sahil Khan, who currently lives in Koramangala in Bengaluru, was told a 3BHK in Cooke Town has a rent of ₹1 lakh, excluding maintenance.
A Bengaluru professional recently shared his ordeal of trying to find a rented home in the city, where rising real estate prices have pushed up rents.
Sahil Khan, a product designer at a startup, took to X on Wednesday with a brief post that triggered a flurry of comments.
"Landlords are asking for 1L rent in Cooke Town for a 3bhk. Have people lost their minds?" he wrote, recalling his house-hunt over the weekend, when he saw eight houses in a day.
Cooke Town in central Bengaluru is a neighbourhood which is part of the old Bangalore Cantonment area.
Khan is getting married and is looking to move into a new house in January. He has been living in Koramangala for over three years and currently pays a rent of ₹50,000 for the 2BHK. He said the brokers showed him Cooke Town apartments whose rents were in the range of ₹75,000 to ₹80,000.
Another 3BHK that he saw had a rent of ₹65,000, which Khan felt was suspiciously low. Soon, he realised that the flat was close to a railway track.
The flat with ₹1 lakh rent was semi-furnished (wardrobes and kitchen cabinets) and wasn't even in a large apartment complex that comes with amenities. The high rent for the 3BHK excluded maintenance.
"There are a lot of IT people (in Bengaluru). So there is money. They (landlords) want some of that (money)," Khan told HT.com.
The product designer, who moved from Pune to Bengaluru in 2021, believes that the IT capital of India needs more FSI (floor space index).
“People have made this as well about religion. People have truly lost their minds,” Khan sain in another post on X.
(Also Read: ‘Cleaned, repainted, still scammed’: Bengaluru man ‘ghosted’ by landlord with half deposit gone)
Here is how other X users reacted:
“The reason rents are up is because the cost of owning houses have gone up sharply. Nearly double in many localities in last three to four years,” said X user Harsha Kollaramajalu.
“They are motivating you buy your own house,” a user joked, to which Khan said he has done the math for that too.
“Bhai yeh trend hain aajkal (This is the trend these days),” another person said.
