The rent is the number everyone discusses. It is not the number that decides whether you can move.
What decides that is the amount you need on the day: the deposit, the first month, the brokerage, the paperwork, the movers, and four or five things nobody mentions until the week you arrive.
That figure changed more in January than it had in twenty years, and most people planning a move are still budgeting for the old one.
What changed
The two-month deposit cap took effect on 8 January 2026. [VERIFY] On a home at ₹1,00,000 a month, that is the single largest change to the cost of moving in this city in living memory. What the Act changed, in full.
Eight lakh rupees, off the top, for the same home.
The rent didn’t move. The barrier did.
Which is why some people who concluded two years ago that they could not afford a particular neighbourhood should look again. The monthly cost is what it was. The entry cost is a third of what it was.
The lines people budget for
Four, and most people get these roughly right.
Two months, residential, under the cap. Returnable on the day you vacate, less legitimate dues. [VERIFY]
Usually payable at or before handover, alongside the deposit.
One month is standard. In Koramangala and Indiranagar, one and a half to two is common, and nothing caps it.
Varies with distance, volume and floor. Get two quotes and confirm whether the lift is included.
The deposit is the largest of the four and the only one you get back, which is why it is worth understanding on its own terms. Ten months’ deposit isn’t always ten months’ deposit.
The lines they don’t
These are the ones that turn a planned number into an unplanned one.
- Society move-in charges, and sometimes a refundable society deposit of its own. Buildings vary enormously here and it is rarely mentioned at the viewing.
- Agreement, e-stamping and registration. Small individually, mandatory now, and often discovered late.
- Painting or handover conditions, if the agreement puts any of it on you.
- Utility transfers and new connections: electricity, gas, water where separately metered, plus deposits on some.
- Internet installation, which in a new building can take longer and cost more than you expect.
- Deep cleaning before you unpack, which almost everyone ends up paying for.
- Curtains, rods and light fittings. The cheapest surprise and the most universal one.
- Appliances, if the flat is unfurnished or semi-furnished in the way that means almost nothing.
Individually these are small. Together, on a premium home, they are routinely another ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh, and they land in the same fortnight.
Two of them are worth reading up on before the week you arrive. How registration actually works.
And what the flat does or doesn’t come with decides most of week one. What “furnished” actually means here.
The number that actually matters
Not the total. The total is knowable and most people can find it.
What matters is how much of it you get back.
- The deposit comes back, in full, if the inventory and the exit are done properly.
- The first month’s rent is rent, and buys you a month.
- Brokerage, movers, agreement, cleaning and setup are gone the moment they are spent.
So on a ₹4.45 lakh day-one cost, roughly ₹2 lakh is recoverable and roughly ₹2.45 lakh is not. That second figure is the real cost of moving, and it is the one worth comparing between two homes, because it is largely the same wherever you go. Which means a move is expensive enough that staying put has a value of its own.
Worth knowing before you move for an extra bedroom.
Where the money is actually won
Most people negotiate the rent and accept everything else. The rent is the hardest line to move and the smallest proportion of month zero.
- Brokerage. The largest negotiable line, and the one least often negotiated.
- Who pays for registration, routinely split.
- Painting and handover condition, which belongs in the agreement rather than in a conversation at the end.
- Lock-in and notice, which decide what an early exit costs you.
- What stays in the flat, which decides how much you buy in week one.
Every figure above is a structure rather than a quote. Actual amounts vary by neighbourhood, building and home. If you want the real number for a specific place, ask. That is a ten-minute answer and we would rather you had it before you commit than after.
