Apartment size expands as office space shrinks

Lockdown reverses trends in space demand

Bucking a four-year declining trend, average apartment sizes grew by 10 per cent in Covid-hit 2020 while office spaces have started shrinking. A major contributor to this trend reversal is the new work from home (WFH) culture.

The average apartment sizes in the top seven cities rose by 10 per cent to

1150 sq. ft. in 2020 from

1050 sq. ft. in 2019.

Last year, space-starved Mumbai saw the highest,

21 per cent, increase in apartment sizes to 932 sq ft from 773 sq ft in the previous year.

Among the big seven cities, Hyderabad has the largest average apartment size of 1750 sq ft, says an update from Anarock Property Consultants.

The average apartment sizes have been reducing since 2016. In 2016 it was

1440 sq ft and by 2017 it had declined 13 per cent to

1260 sq ft.

"The two main

reasons for apartment sizes reducing in previous years were affordability and millennials' preference for lowmaintenance homes. Keen to generate more buyer interest with smaller price-tags, developers whittled down their flat sizes. But 2020 saw an almost immediate reversal of buyer preferences. With the accent suddenly being on accommodating the WFH and learn-fromhome culture, flat sizes began increasing for the first time in four years," said Anuj Puri, chairman, Anarock Property Consultants.

The same work from home (WFH) culture saw the average size of office space shrinking in 2020. According to Nobroker.com, companies are choosing smaller office spaces now compared to pre-Covid times as many of them have adopted WFH as an option for at least a part of their employees.

Start-ups, IT companies and financial services have freed up office space during the lockdown and are looking to work out a hybrid model in the future where work-from-office would be on a rotational basis for the employees. About 30-40 per cent of the companies, mainly driven by start-ups, IT and financial services companies, have let go of their leased office spaces either partially or completely postlock-down.

This led to a drastic fall in demand for office space, especially larger sapce.

"While we have witnessed the overall office demand fall by about 50 per cent during the November-January period compared to the same period a year ago, the demand for office spaces which are lesser than 5000 sq ft is witnessing a less severe decline in demand," said Amit Agarwal, co-founder and CEO of NoBroker.com

Demand for small office space has fallen only by about 25 per cent during the same months.