Demand for studio apartments shrinks since onset of pandemic

14 Jul , 2022 By : Monika Singh

The studio apartments seem to be falling out of vogue as the overall supply share of this segment has been dipping across the top seven cities since 2020. Latest Anarock research shows that out of the 1,063 projects launched in the first half of 2022, only 91 projects offered studio apartments — a 9% share. In contrast, of the 1,921 projects launched in 2019, around 368 or 19% had studio apartments. Interestingly, this category of apartments were the hottest-selling configurations before the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2020, the share was 15% — of 884 projects launched in the year, around 130 projects offered studio apartments, while in 2021, 145 out of 1,207 launched projects had them as options.

This year-on-year decline is a significant trend reversal — between 2013 and 2019, the share of new projects offering studio apartments showed a y-o-y increase — from 4% in 2013 to 19% in 2019.

Anuj Puri, chairman, Anarock Group said, “Once seen as ideal starter homes, they drew considerable demand from bachelors, business travellers visiting the city frequently for work, and young couples. What they lack in size, they often make up on location — studio apartments are most evident in pricey locations around key employment hubs.”

However, Puri said that the rapid reversal of this trend after Covid-19 is indicative of the major socio-economic changes that have occurred due to the pandemic.
“Of the 2,102 projects launched in the top 7 cities in 2013, just 75 projects had this option. After that, their availability in projects grew consistently, peaking at 19% in 2019,” he said.

The studio apartments trend is historically the strongest in west India, with MMR and Pune predominantly driving the trend.

Of the total projects with studio apartments launched in the top seven cities between 2013-2020, MMR and Pune together accounted for a massive 96% share.

In contrast, the southern cities of Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad never really caught the studio apartment wave — just 34 projects in these three cities had this compact configuration in the same period.

In H1 of 2022, of the 91 projects offering studio apartments across the top 7 cities, MMR is at the top with 71 projects, followed by Pune with 18 projects. In Bengaluru, just 2 projects offer this configuration while the other cities do not offer it at all.