Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Daybreak
Daybreak · July 16 · 11 min

$15 billion in security deposits: India's tenants are their landlords' cheapest lenders

Tenants across India's six biggest metros have handed landlords Rs 1.26 trillion in security deposits, a new NoBroker study estimates. Around $15 billion of tenant money, refundable in name, sits in landlords' accounts earning interest for people it does not belong to. In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma ask what a deposit actually costs a renter, and arrives at a number: nearly a month's rent, every year. The same tenant who pays 2 months' deposit in Mumbai is asked for 10 in Bengaluru, and in Delhi NCR, about 4 in 10 never got their full deposit back. Renting was meant to be a phase. But with home ownership drifting out of reach, tenants may be extending this loan for decades. Tune in. Recommendations: It sucks to be a tenant in Bengaluru right now *Take The Ken's audit here Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

0:00-11:32
Play in podnod

transcript

No transcript — this publisher did not publish one.

show notes

Tenants across India's six biggest metros have handed landlords Rs 1.26 trillion in security deposits, a new NoBroker study estimates. Around $15 billion of tenant money, refundable in name, sits in landlords' accounts earning interest for people it does not belong to.

In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma ask what a deposit actually costs a renter, and arrives at a number: nearly a month's rent, every year. The same tenant who pays 2 months' deposit in Mumbai is asked for 10 in Bengaluru, and in Delhi NCR, about 4 in 10 never got their full deposit back.

Renting was meant to be a phase. But with home ownership drifting out of reach, tenants may be extending this loan for decades.

Tune in.

Recommendations:
It sucks to be a tenant in Bengaluru right now

*Take The Ken's audit here

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

links4

more episodes

All episodes