By buld_online 
India’s real estate market is ballooning on shaky ground, warns Deepak Shenoy, CEO of Capitalmind, who calls current valuations—especially for flats—“undecipherable” and dangerously delusional.
Responding to growing chatter on social media about sky-high property prices in flood-prone areas and irrational valuations, Shenoy drew attention to the “prices can’t fall” belief entrenched in India’s property market.
“We have had extremely long periods of valuation increases in cities, and no institutional memory of a fall in prices (last was 1997?),” he posted on X. “Dangerous.”
Shenoy’s warning came after a post slammed the absurdity of ₹100 crore flats in low-lying neighborhoods, calling it a “false perception of scarcity value” disconnected from India’s real earning capacity.
One user agreed, noting, “Anything done in EXCESS is bound to go burst.” They argued that as long as GDP growth stays above 6%, prices may not fall sharply—but cautioned against speculative buying. “Don’t buy with a view to sell in 2–5 years,” they advised.
Another post described a brand-new flat in Bengaluru’s Koramangala that remains unsold even as the builder has hiked prices by 10% every quarter. “Builders always had holding power that causes the prices not to crash,” they wrote.
Others questioned the actual returns on real estate. One user, who sold his Pune flat after eight years, revealed his CAGR was just 4.5%. “If I had just bought ₹20k of HDFC stock monthly instead, I’d have made so much more.”
Shobhit Kumar, a user on X, highlighted a grimmer issue: “One of the only places to park black money. Many buyers also ask for a big chunk in cash. It’s a wild wild world,” he wrote, pointing to rampant under-the-table transactions that complicate the market for honest taxpayers.