Is this the best time to buy a home? Expert shares reasons property might be more affordable in 2026

Credit desks at housing finance companies today experience a common pattern: salaried professionals, engineers, teachers, nurses, and government employees in their late 20s and early 30s arrive with a dream and a payslip.

They have done all the right things. They have a down payment saved up. Their credit rating is good. They have visited projects in the outer parts of the city on weekends. Then they sit across the table and ask the question that silently defines their financial decade: Am I ready? Is this really affordable? In 2026, the honest answer is “it depends.” And more than ever before, that answer requires an understanding not just of the loan but also of the world around it.

Rohan Shah, National Credit Head, Easy Home Finance Ltd. shares the nuances of home loans and what it takes to buy a property in 2026.What's working today in favour of a home buyer During 2025, the RBI slashed the repo rate four times from 6.5% to 5.25%. Interest rates on home loans are currently sitting at around 7.1%, the lowest they’ve been since the pandemic‑era relief window. On a ₹50 lakh loan taken at 8.5% three years ago, a borrower would today be saving approximately ₹3,800–₹4,000 on the EMI every month.

That’s not a small number; it is effectively a family’s grocery bill for the month, back in the household’s pocket.

However, this window may not remain open indefinitely. The rupee is trading near ₹96 to the dollar, a level that is worrying enough for the Prime Minister to appeal to citizens to work from home and cut down on foreign spending to conserve foreign exchange. When currency stress reaches that level in public conversation, the RBI is faced with a tough choice.

It can keep rates low to support growth or hike to defend the rupee. Even a reversal of 50 basis points makes a significant difference to EMI calculations on a 20‑year loan. The market is currently pricing in stability; individual borrowers should not make that assumption on a 20‑year commitment.

What does a given salary actually buy?At this point, borrowers are advised to be brutally honest with themselves. In a normal underwriting model, about 3 to 4 times annual income is typically approved as a home‑loan amount.

This works out, for example, to a monthly salary of ₹60,000 for a mid‑career professional, who would be eligible for a loan of around ₹40–45 lakh. At a 20‑year tenure and an interest rate of about 7.1%, the EMI is roughly ₹31,000. That is 51% of take‑home pay.

Yes, right at the top of what responsible lending allows.Applied to the market, the picture becomes clearer. The price‑to‑income ratio I.e. how many years of full salary it takes to buy a home has reached about 14.3x in Mumbai.

In Delhi‑NCR, it is in the range of 8–10x. Even in more affordable cities like Pune and Hyderabad, it is 5–6x. In practical terms, with a loan of ₹45 lakh, a buyer can usually get a 1BHK in a peripheral location in most metropolitan cities. A 2BHK in a decent neighbourhood typically requires a higher income, a larger down payment, or a co‑borrower.This is not pessimism. It is arithmetic. And borrowers are better served hearing it directly from lenders before they commit, rather than after.

There is another dynamic that most first‑time buyers miss. Loan rates are falling, but construction costs are expected to rise by 3–5% in 2026, and labour costs are up by almost 12% after the new labour code implementations. Developers are absorbing what they can, but that buffer has limits. Affordable housing supply met only about 36% of actual demand in 2025, and homes priced under ₹50 lakh accounted for just 17% of new launches, down from 52% in 2018.Translation: the loan is getting cheaper, but the flat is becoming costlier. A buyer who waits six months to see rates come down by another 25 bps may end up losing more in property appreciation than is gained through EMI reduction.CBRE’s Housing Affordability Index suggests that in India, for the first time in years, household income growth will outpace property price appreciation between 2026 and 2028, which is a rare opening for clear‑eyed buyers.

Hyderabad, Pune, and certain micro‑markets in Chennai and the outskirts of Bengaluru emerge as realistic entry points for households with monthly incomes of ₹60,000–80,000. The Prime Minister’s work‑from‑home call, while driven by currency concerns, has an unintended upside for buyers: it is re‑legitimising peripheral locations and larger homes as practical choices.

This pattern was evident post‑COVID as well. Households that bought homes on the skirts of the city secured larger units at lower prices and now hold appreciating assets as infrastructure catches up.The risk checklist From a credit and risk perspective, there are a few key questions that should be answered before a first‑time buyer’s loan is considered truly sustainable, and they are the same questions borrowers should ask themselves:

Viewed through this lens, 2026 is a good year to buy a first home. But only if the purchase is treated as a financial decision, not an emotional one. Such cheap loans have not been available for years. The macro environment is volatile. Truly affordable homes are becoming fewer. And the window between a buyer’s market and a tightening one is thinner than headlines often suggest. The buyers who will look back at 2026 as the year they made the right call are likely to be those who ran the numbers honestly, chose within their means, and bought with a 10‑year horizon in mind, not a 10‑month one.