NOVEMBER 20188 NOVEMBER 8 NOVEMBER 88 NOVEMBER 2018NOVEMBER ne can hardly contest the intense love we Indians have for real estate which, if anything, has grown to be more intense in the past two decades--easy availability of housing finance did play a significant role in that. This has resulted in more and more people investing in property over the past decade. Resultantly, only 28 per cent of our population lives in rented homes today. This is a steep decline from what it used to be in 1961 when 54 percent per cent of people lived in rented accommodations. However, it would be a mistake to tag this reduction in numbers significant if we consider the enormous rise in population numbers since.On the other hand, there are 11 million vacant homes and 0.8 million unsold homes in the country as per Census 2011. Still, the urban housing shortage is pegged at 19 million.These numbers indicate to-wards the complexities in Indian's rental real estate faces today. As a result of which, the country's rel-atively young renters -- 65 per cent of Indians today are not more than 35 years old -- face several chal-lenges in finding suitable rented accommodation.As it strives to become more organised, our rental real estate market will have to depend a great deal on technology, which is already changing the way homes are bought, sold and rented in the country. One-third of our population is keen on renting given that property costs are high and a majority is turning to online mediums to find their homes, just like in the West. Our problems are not very different, but elsewhere, technology adoption is becoming a norm.Walking the Tech-TalkA joint study by Housing.com and Makaan.com shows the high-est number of searches for rental homes came from those who are between 18 and 34 of age. By 2020, the average age of Indians would be 29 years, and the tenants in this young country will need ad-ditional help from digital mediums to serve them better. It would be a mistake to assume market play-ers are unaware of the fact and are not doing their best to cater to this segment. Most real estate portals have been out there, doing their best. What they now have to do is to work towards minimis-ing the difficulty young tenants face in finding the right property A tech-adventurer who loves data and takes data driven decisions to build scalable technology for real business problemINDIA'S RENTAL MARKET IS LEAPING BUT NOT WITHOUT ODDSBy Ravi Bhushan Kumar, CPTO (Group Chief Product and Technology Officer), PropTiger.comIN MY OPINIONO
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