Who Is Still Buying Flats in Bengaluru?

Bengaluru’s unsold homes rose 34% in a year to about 79,180 by June 2026, the biggest rise among the top seven cities. Average prices still rose 8% in the same period.

Stock goes up and prices go up too. That is a strange pair, and it is why people use the word “bubble”. But a bubble needs people who buy only to resell. Many consultants and developers describe Bengaluru as a city of end users, people who buy a home to live in. That may be partly true. It is also what sellers like to say.

The pile

At the end of 2025, Bengaluru had 64,863 unsold homes, up from 52,807. In six months the pile grew by about 14,000 more.

The cause is simple. In April to June, builders launched 21,670 homes, up 41%, but sold only 15,285, up 1%. In one quarter, launches beat sales by about 6,400.

July to September was better. Sales rose 12% to 16,670. Launches were about 17,720, up 17%. The gap shrank to about 1,000. At the Q2 sales pace, 79,180 homes would take about 15 months to sell, even if no new project launched. That is my own calculation.

The jobs

Here the IT story begins. The top five IT firms cut their combined headcount by 6,981 in FY26. TCS started FY27 with 25,000 fresher offers, against about 44,000 hires the year before. Anarock said weak demand after IT layoffs was one reason housing sales in the top seven cities fell 14% in 2025. Bengaluru’s sales fell 5% that year.

A small recovery has started. The five firms added 16,055 people in April to September 2026, against 3,097 a year earlier, but Wipro cut 5,828 jobs, and experts say this is not yet a recovery.

A young engineer who sees these headlines will wait before signing a 25-year loan. That is a sensible choice.

Why

Three things hold buyers back.

1. Price. The average price keeps rising, and buyers are becoming more selective.
2. Product. Ninety-six per cent of Bengaluru’s new launches were priced above ₹80 lakh. Builders are making homes for the rich.
3. Fear. An ₹80 lakh home needs a steady salary for many years. After layoffs, that is hard to promise.

So the stock is not piling up because Bengaluru has no buyers. It is piling up because builders are making homes for a narrow group of buyers.

Who’s still hiring

The answer is global capability centres (GCCs), the Indian offices of foreign companies. Nearly 2 million people work in India’s GCCs, and Bengaluru took over a third of the country’s GCC office leasing in 2025. Bengaluru’s office leasing rose 11% in Q3 2026.

These workers are the new buyers. Senior GCC staff, product leaders, tech founders and NRIs now buy the larger homes. Sales of homes priced ₹1 crore to ₹3 crore rose 58% in the first half of 2026.

The buyer has changed. A services-company employee is out. A senior GCC professional is in.

So, is it a collapse?

The data does not show one. Sales are rising, not falling.

But it is a split market. Builders will not run out of customers. They may run out of customers at today’s prices and for today’s kind of home. The unsold flats are already for sale. Expect longer waits and more offers on payment plans, with price cuts being the harder step for builders.

Bengaluru’s market is not breaking. It is sorting buyers into those who can pay and those who cannot, and a builder who ignores that second group may wait a long time.

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