JLL data shows India's homebuyers moved sharply up the price ladder in H1 2026, with Rs 1.5-3 crore home sales up 58% year-on-year, while budget housing kept losing ground.
India's housing market grew in the first half of 2026, but the real story isn't the growth number itself. It's who's actually buying. According to JLL, residential sales across seven major cities rose a modest 3 per cent year-on-year to 138,382 units between January and June. New launches climbed faster, up 9 per cent to 168,507 units. Those numbers alone sound steady, unremarkable even. Dig one layer deeper, though, and the picture changes fast.
Homes priced between Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 3 crore sold 58 per cent more than a year ago, hitting 51,231 units. That's the fastest-growing price band in the entire market, by a wide margin. Put together, homes above Rs 1 crore now make up 71 per cent of all residential sales in the country, up from 62 per cent just a year earlier. Meanwhile, homes under Rs 50 lakh fell 32 per cent. The Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore bracket dropped 20 per cent. Budget housing, in short, is shrinking while premium housing pulls further ahead.
City by city, the split gets sharper. Bengaluru led the pack with 35,017 units sold, up 16 per cent. Chennai posted the fastest growth rate of any city, up 27 per cent to 8,587 units. Delhi-NCR grew too, though more modestly, up 7 per cent to 20,761 units. Not every city joined the party. Pune fell 14 per cent, Hyderabad slipped 3 per cent, and both Mumbai and Kolkata dipped 1 per cent each. Even so, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi-NCR together still accounted for three-fourths of all sales nationwide, so the market's centre of gravity hasn't really moved, even if individual cities had rough patches.
Developers clearly noticed where the demand is. Bengaluru alone saw new launches jump 41 per cent to 48,748 units. Mumbai launches rose 18 per cent, Delhi-NCR climbed 14 per cent. Prices kept climbing too, rising between 6 and 15 per cent across all seven cities, with Bengaluru again at the top of that list.
Siva Krishnan, JLL's Senior Managing Director for Chennai and Coimbatore, called the shift a sign of maturity rather than a fluke. Buyers, he said, are increasingly willing to pay for well-located, premium developments that hold long-term value, not just whatever's cheapest nearby. He pointed to rising incomes, better infrastructure and expanding metro networks as the forces behind that willingness to spend more. Sales did slow a bit in the April-June quarter, but JLL puts that down to seasonal habits and buyers simply taking longer to decide, not any real weakening in demand.
At Hommea, this shift changes how we'd frame advice for anyone sitting on the fence between buying a smaller unit now or waiting until they have the budget for a larger one. The data suggests the market is rewarding patience and a bigger ticket size, at least for now, since demand at the lower end keeps thinning out while mid-to-premium homes attract steadier interest. Whether that trend holds through the second half of the year will depend a lot on how affordability and lending conditions move from here, but for now, the ladder is being climbed, not the base being widened.
