The Grey Beard Annual
Market Report

The Reserve Bank of India's policy stance through FY 2025-26 moved in the direction of measured easing. The repo rate was cut by 25 basis points at the April 2025 Monetary Policy Committee meeting (to 6.00 per cent), by a further 50 basis points in June 2025 (to 5.50 per cent), and by another 25 basis points in December 2025 (to 5.25 per cent), with holds at the August, October, and February reviews — cumulative easing of 100 basis points over the year (source: RBI MPC statements, April 2025 to February 2026).

For the luxury segment Grey Beard operates in, interest rate movements matter less than they would for mid-market housing. The majority of transactions above ₹10 Crore are fully banked but not financed — they are paid for, not borrowed for. Rate movements influence these buyers only at the margin, through broader liquidity effects.

National Capital Region residential sales for calendar year 2025 are reported at approximately 52,452 units by Knight Frank (H2 2025 India Real Estate Report), a year-on-year decline of roughly 9 per cent. Both Knight Frank and JLL point in the same direction: 2025 saw lower NCR residential sales volume than 2024, even as pricing moved sharply higher. Average NCR prices rose 19 to 23 per cent year-on-year in calendar 2025, the highest among major Indian metros (Knight Frank; Anarock).

In South Delhi specifically, new launches from organised developers remained effectively nil. Virtually all transactional activity occurred in the secondary market — either redeveloped builder floors or transfer of existing inventory. This is structurally different from neighbouring Gurgaon, where new launches continue to be a meaningful driver of market activity.

The Union Budget presented on 1 February 2026 was light on direct real-estate measures. No changes were made to the long-term capital gains regime, to TDS on NRI property sales, or to home-loan interest deductions. The prior budget's LTCG regime change — removing indexation benefits in favour of a flat 12.5 per cent rate, with an option for sellers of property held before 23 July 2024 to use the earlier indexed regime — continued to shape seller behaviour through the year, modestly accelerating activity where holding periods were long and acquisition costs were low.

This report's primary pricing dataset is the Golden Growth Fund's research on average floor prices across South Delhi colonies, published in February 2026. The data compares calendar year 2024 with calendar year 2025.

The 34 per cent year-on-year movement in 2,500 square foot floors in high-premium colonies is the most arresting figure. Smaller formats outpaced larger formats — a pattern driven by the width of the qualifying buyer pool. The 2,500 square foot bracket is accessible to first-time South Delhi buyers, NRIs looking for a second home, younger high-net-worth entrants, and family offices allocating modest positions. The 6,000 square foot bracket is the preserve of a smaller number of end-user buyers for whom the larger footprint is a functional requirement.

The ten crore rupee threshold, which the average premium-tier 2,500 square foot floor crossed during 2025, functions now as a psychological and practical entry point into the high-premium conversation. Below that level, inventory on offer is either a substandard construction, a mispriced listing, or an outlier case that warrants careful examination.

Ultra-premium covers two sub-bands that behave quite differently. The first is the Lutyens bungalow zone proper — Golf Links and Sunder Nagar — where stock is overwhelmingly bungalow format, supply is effectively fixed, redevelopment is nil, and pricing operates on its own plane well above the high-premium figures above. The second sub-band is the non-Lutyens ultra-premium enclaves — Jor Bagh, Westend, Shanti Niketan, and Chanakya Puri — which are very expensive but sit outside the Lutyens bungalow zone. No external research, including GGF's, covers either sub-band on a systematic basis.

South Delhi is a structurally supply-constrained market. This is not a feature of the year under review; it is a feature of the market itself.

No new land. South Delhi is fully built out. There are no master plan additions and no fresh land being opened up for new construction. Any "new" supply that enters the market comes through redevelopment of existing properties.

Redevelopment does not add net supply. When a 500 square yard plot is torn down for redevelopment, it typically yields four floors — ground floor plus three. Per-plot floor count has not changed; per-plot square footage has risen. Where a 2,500 square foot floor was the norm on such a plot a decade ago, 3,500 to 4,500 square foot floors are common today. Net inventory addition to the luxury segment in most colonies has remained flat or negative once demolition is accounted for.

Completion cycles have extended. Our own observation across colonies we worked in through FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26 is that the median time from demolition to completion certificate has lengthened. Neither the MCD nor the DDA publishes a systematic median-completion-timeline series for South Delhi redevelopment; the observation above is Grey Beard's own.

Four demand pools shaped FY 2025-26.

The NRI return

After approximately three years of softer NRI buying activity, FY 2025-26 saw a material return of NRI interest in South Delhi residential. Three factors were principal contributors.

Capital rotation from Gurgaon

A recurring theme of our FY 2025-26 transactions was buyers who had realised substantial gains on Gurgaon developments between 2020 and 2024 — Dwarka Expressway, select Golf Course Extension projects, parts of New Gurgaon — and who were rotating a share of those proceeds into South Delhi. These buyers were generally not switching cities; they were diversifying within NCR. South Delhi's stability premium, its liquidity during periods when new-launch markets might be softer, and its intergenerational hold characteristics all appealed.

Domestic HNI and family office inflows

The domestic HNI pool continued to expand. Family offices — whether arising from unlisted company promoter exits, public market exits, or structured wealth allocation — deployed increasing capital into South Delhi residential through the year.

The full-cheque structural shift

Demand for fully banked transactions — where the complete consideration flows through regulated channels — rose materially through the year. In the ₹10 Crore and above segment, the expectation of a full-cheque standard is now the default position among serious buyers and serious sellers. This reflects the cumulative effect of enhanced enforcement under the Benami Transactions Act, GST scrutiny on developer payments, and a general maturation of buyer preferences toward transactions that hold up to scrutiny by regulators, auditors, and future generations of the family.

South Delhi does not exist in isolation. This section situates South Delhi's FY 2025-26 performance against three other Indian luxury residential micro-markets and against the Lutyens Bungalow Zone within Delhi itself.

Four policy items shaped FY 2025-26 for South Delhi residential.

Grey Beard's working framework for South Delhi groups 48 colonies along four broad bands based on pricing, liquidity, buyer profile, and supply characteristics. Every colony has its own dedicated page at greybeard.in covering plot-size patterns, block-level premiums, build characteristics, community profile, and the other factors that shape pricing.

In FY 2025-26, transaction activity in the two Friends Colonies — sitting in the high-premium band — picked up noticeably. More floors changed hands, more inventory was released by sellers, and buyer participation broadened. This is a pocket worth watching through the first half of FY 2026-27. For the full, colony-by-colony treatment, see greybeard.in/south-delhi.

Threshold view. Ten crore rupees will likely cease to be the entry ticket for the high-premium segment during FY 2026-27. It will settle at a higher level — in our working view, closer to ₹12 to ₹13 Crore by the close of FY 2026-27 — simply as a function of another year of high-single-digit to low-double-digit appreciation on a base that began 2025 near ₹10.75 Crore.

Demand outlook. NRI share of transactions is likely to grow further. Family office allocations into luxury residential are likely to continue expanding. Gurgaon-to-South Delhi capital rotation is likely to continue at a moderating pace as the realised profits of the 2020-2024 Gurgaon cycle get progressively redeployed. Fresh buyer groups to watch include returning tech IPO wealth, structured unlisted-company exits, and second-generation family office deployment.

Supply outlook. No structural change. South Delhi will not add new land-based supply. Redevelopment will continue at roughly its current pace. Net inventory additions will remain flat to slightly negative in most colonies. Ultra-premium and the top of the high-premium band will remain most supply-starved.

Primary pricing data for South Delhi is drawn from Golden Growth Fund research on average floor prices, released February 2026. We have reproduced the Golden Growth Fund's underlying figures with attribution and restated its category labels in terms of Grey Beard's own four-tier colony framework for readability.

Macro and institutional data is drawn from Reserve Bank of India Monetary Policy Committee statements covering April 2025 to February 2026, RBI Sectoral Deployment of Bank Credit data, Press Information Bureau press releases on the Union Budget 2026-27, and sector commentary from KPMG India on the budget.

Real estate consultancy sources include Anarock's Q2, Q3, and CY2025 Residential Viewpoints, the Anarock H1 2025 Homebuyer Sentiment Survey, Anarock and 360 One Wealth's ultra-luxury tracker (December 2025), Knight Frank India's H2 2025 Real Estate Report, Knight Frank's Wealth Report and Prime Global Cities Index, the CREDAI-Colliers-Liases Foras India Real Estate Report September 2025, Colliers India's 2026 Real Estate Outlook, and JLL India's Residential Dynamics Q4 2025 releases for Delhi and Mumbai.

Secondary and editorial sources — the Economic Times Realty, Mint, Business Standard, and real estate trade press tracking Gurgaon corridor activity — have been used for context and for cross-market comparisons where institutional data series were not directly comparable.

Grey Beard qualitative inputs draw on the firm's twenty-year direct operating history in South Delhi residential, its transactional experience through FY 2025-26, and its regular engagement with buyers, sellers, and advisors across the segments covered.