Developers signed deals for 7,714 acres of residential land between January 2021 and March 2026, the largest single-use category in an 18,158-acre land market spanning 33 Indian cities.
Realty firms signed deals for more than 7,700 acres of residential land between January 2021 and March 2026, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report titled "Building India: Land Markets Define the Next Development Frontier." That residential figure sits inside a much larger total. Across all asset classes, 18,158 acres changed hands over more than 880 agreements spanning 33 Indian cities during the same period. Housing was the single biggest category by volume.
Cushman & Wakefield's report puts it plainly: "Residential land transactions continue to be the anchor of volume, supported by sustained housing demand across major urban centres."
Not all land deals look the same, and the report breaks down the mix. Outright purchases accounted for 10,910 acres of the total, the largest single structure. Partnership-led arrangements, joint ventures and joint developments together, made up over 4,405 acres. Long-lease agreements added close to 2,520 acres, while redevelopment deals, where an existing built asset gets replaced rather than raw land developed fresh, contributed 323 acres. That last category is small in absolute terms, but it's a meaningful signal given how much attention redevelopment has drawn in cities like Mumbai this year.
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The 33 cities covered here go well beyond the usual top-eight list. Delhi-NCR is represented through Delhi itself, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, and Noida including Greater Noida. But the list also includes Amritsar, Cuttack, Dahej, Kurukshetra, Meerut, Mohali, Panchkula, Panipat, Rewari, and Sonipat, tier-2 and tier-3 markets that don't typically get this kind of dedicated land-market coverage. That spread matters for how you read the total number. This isn't just metro land banking. It's evidence that organised developers are placing bets across a genuinely wide geographic net.
Cushman & Wakefield frames the scale in built-up terms too: the land assembled over this roughly five-year window has the capacity to support approximately 1.4 billion square feet of future development. Anshul Jain, the firm's Chief Executive for India, SEA, MEA and APAC Office and Retail, described three structural shifts underpinning this land activity: infrastructure pushing development into new corridors rather than just established metro cores, larger contiguous parcels replacing fragmented smaller sites, and partnership-based models increasingly replacing straightforward ownership.
"The land that is being assembled today is effectively a forward order book for the next decade of growth," Jain said, calling this Indian real estate's most durable and investable phase yet.
This 7,714-acre residential figure lines up with a pattern we've already been tracking piece by piece. NCR alone has seen a steady drumbeat of land deals this year, institutional funds backing specific projects, developers expanding into Ghaziabad and Greater Noida, and land values along corridors like the Dwarka Expressway repricing sharply as infrastructure delivers.
This report is the aggregate view behind those individual data points, confirming that the land-buying activity feeding NCR's pipeline isn't a local anomaly. It's part of a nationwide pattern spanning five years and three dozen cities.
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A land bank this size doesn't turn into finished housing overnight. Typical development timelines mean a meaningful share of this 7,714 acres won't reach market as completed units for another three to six years, depending on approvals, construction pace, and how each city's regulatory process moves. For anyone trying to gauge future housing supply rather than just current prices, this kind of land-acquisition data is often a better leading indicator than launch announcements, since land has to be bought well before a project can be launched at all.
