Post-Budget Impact on India's Real Estate: Trends & Outlook

In an exclusive interaction with Adlin Pertishya Jebaraj, Correspondent at Homes India, Devang Doshi, Chief Financial Officer, Duville Estates, describes the Union Budget 2026's role in providing support through long-term capital deployments and consistent growth corridors. He highlights the key factors that have created this outcome include infrastructure investment - supported by policy assurances - along with the increased reliance of large and well-funded private investors on co-developing real estate developments. 

With over 19 years of experience in all areas of real estate finance, governance, and strategic leadership, Devang is an expert in financial planning, project funding, valuation, compliance and risk management of large-scale developments such as Riverdale micro-township and future projects. 

How has the Union Budget reshaped sentiment across residential, commercial, and industrial real estate segments in India? 

Union Budget 2026 has focused more on the stability of sentiments rather than temporary enhancements. In residential real estate, the investment in the sustained infrastructure allocation and urban development such as Rs. 12.2 lakh crore capex and metro/highway expansions has supported the faith in growth corridors and peripheral micro-markets, where connectivity is the major value generator.  

The structural demand has been enhanced by the manufacturing, logistics parks, and production-linked incentives in the Budget in commercial and industrial real estate. Assets in the industrial and warehousing sectors are especially enjoying policy continuity that is facilitating localisation of the supply-chain and export preparedness. The office demand, as it continues to develop towards hybrid forms, is experiencing a better corporate mood as the financial stability lessens the problems in expansion planning. 

No demand spike was created. However, the Budget has strengthened policy continuity, which is at times more valuable to capital intensive industries such as real estate. When macro signals are consistent, it enables the developers and investors to make long-term plans and this has a direct effect on capital deployment decisions. 

What challenges continue to constrain real estate growth despite policy support, particularly in land acquisition, approvals, funding access, and execution timelines? 

Although the policy direction is favorable, implementation is the most long-lasting limitation of the sector. Urban India land aggregation is still characterized by poor title ownership, fragmentation, and long duration of negotiations. Following acquisition, permission procedures through planning, environmental and municipal authorities tend to progress in stages, and not concurrently, increasing the gestation of the project. 

It has enhanced access to funding to established developers, but capital has been selective. According to the recent sector reviews by ICRA, lenders and investors still lay emphasis on balance-sheet strength, governance track record and project-related visibility. There is capital, which is not evenly distributed within the developer ecosystem. 

The labour availability, capacity of the contractor and co-ordination of the supply-chain further affect the execution timelines. Construction technologies are enhancing predictability but the execution of a project still demands a tight coordination among various parties. Policy preconditions the situation, and operational complexity is the decisive factor of project velocity and financial performance. 

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How do you assess the Budget’s impact on housing affordability, especially for first-time buyers and mid-income households across Tier I and Tier II cities? 

The push of affordability in Budget 2026 is indirect but effective. The infrastructure investment such as Rs 18,625 crore of PMAY-Urban enhances connectivity to the peripherals, and land cost is lower, and housing supply can be more efficiently planned. This widens the pool of potential destinations of first-time buyers without necessarily using the compression of prices. 

In the Tier II cities, with more balanced income-to-price ratios of property prices, buyer confidence is supported by a more stable fiscal situation and a more focused urban investment. In the Tier I cities, though, the affordability can be identified as being sensitive to interest rates and household liquidity. Even a small variation in the cost of borrowing will also affect buying habits and this is in line with findings that have often been noted in reports by institutions like the Reserve Bank of India. 

Furthermore, the Budget is outstanding in assisting the feasibility of supply-side and infrastructural in-depth, instead of cutting the cost of acquisition. In the long-run, better connectivity and planned urbanization can serve to level the price growth and increase the comprising housing offerings to the middle-income groups. 

How is sustainability being influenced by fiscal incentives, green building policies, and ESG-linked financing in the post-Budget environment? 

Today finances are determined by sustainability rather than designs. The integration of renewable, energy efficiency, green hydrogen, CCUS (Rs.20,000 crore) and climate bonds are being supported by fiscal means indicating that policy and capital markets are becoming more and more aligned. The reports like the recent green buildings analysis by CBRE reveal that development that is environmentally-efficient is linked to higher absorption growth and long-term operations cost-effectiveness. 

Financially, green capital instruments and the development of ESG-linked lending are becoming increasingly applicable, especially to large-scale majority of the master-plan projects where it is possible to quantify the environmental performance over the lifecycle. As a developer, this would imply that sustainability decisions at the blue print stage do not only affect the value of assets but also the cost of capital and perception of the investors. 

The post-Budget climate supports the fact that sustainability is no longer an overlay but an integral element of risk control, valuation and financial plan. 

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Looking ahead five to seven years, how do you envision India’s real estate landscape evolving in terms of demand drivers, capital structures, and asset innovation following this Budget cycle? 

Within five to seven years, the real estate environment in India would be determined by better structural demand and more disciplined capital structures.  

Migration to cities, development of corridors through infrastructure, and further formalization of employment sectors will facilitate expansion of integrated townships and mixed-use settings where livability, accessibility and social infrastructure will be equally significant as the built property.  

Meanwhile, there is a shift in direction in terms of funding structure, as increasingly governance and performance-related, with developers showing predictable cash flows and execution credibility, as well as ESG alignment, would have access to a wider range of institutional and structured capital. 

Innovation at the asset level will focus more on design efficiency, technology enabled building and sustainability at the planning level. Better lifecycle costs, energy efficiency, and flexibility of spaces to changing lifestyle and work patterns is more and more in the focus of end users as well as investors. The general trend in the sector is overall toward a more structured, capital-productive and sustainability-aligned ecosystem with long-term planning discipline and financial resilience becoming the new competitive advantages.