Versions of Us: House-hunting in Mumbai

Exploring alternative Mumbai lives as we look for a new apartment. 

For the past month I have been house-hunting. This is not how I had planned to spend my January, I’ll have you know. I came into 2026 with a let’s find a new job energy; a let’s sign up to some more wacky races energy; a let’s plan more trips away from Mumbai to explore India energy. 

Here in mid-February, I’m already drained. I’ve expended every last joule of those energies traipsing around the twenty-odd apartments I saw — peering into the possible alternate versions of our Mumbai life each one offered. 

When moving to a new country or city (or both, as is often the case), I consider it part of the initiation that I have to find myself somewhere to live. I’ve never been given accommodation as part of a study or job placement and I’ve always been (reluctantly and often with much delay) grateful for this. House-hunting forces you to visit parts of a new city that you might never visit again, helps you get a much better lay of the land and traffic situation than can be gleaned from any map, and provides you with a deep, deep well of anecdotes about places you’re glad you never had to live. 

But when house-hunting in a city of which you’re already a resident, you’re not sizing up different neighbourhoods, you’re trying on different versions of the life you already lead — deciding if you’d enjoy the city more or less from the homes you see. Is the commute better or worse? Do the neighbours look like the sort of people you’d be alright getting stuck in a lift with? Will you have more or less storage space — if you don’t count the showers? Can you walk to, well, in Mumbai, anywhere at all, really: a shop, a restaurant, a park? And will the facilities meet Jasper’s high lifestyle standards?

Most importantly in Mumbai, you have to ask yourself, does it feel like value for money? This is  a trick question because, in my opinion, nothing is worth what the rental market is asking in Mumbai. Rental prices have sky-rocketed over the 4 years we’ve lived here and so, as we pin down our third and probably not final (if things continue the way they are going) apartment, we are in the process of downgrading our life — for the second time. What we paid for a three-bed in 2022 now barely gets you a two-bed. What we are currently paying for a four-bed, now only gets you a three-bed. And that’s just within our current apartment complex. Outside of this, as you get into ‘prestigious address’ or ‘selective community’ territory, the prices are even higher. 

They are, perhaps surprisingly considering India is a developing economy, New York prices. I lived in New York for a year, in a tiny, West Village apartment made up of two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living/ cooking area in which only one person could move around at once. We did our laundry in the basement, and our air conditioners’ backsides protruded from the windows, out onto the metal fire escapes. We had barely any storage and only enough fridge space to save food for 1-2 days, but it was New York: outside the apartment was where life was meant to be lived. I walked to work, I used the subway, I ran up and down the Hudson River park on weekends. I visited museums, ate at corner delis, and met friends in public parks. It was a movie set, a history lesson, a cultural immersion and a rat race all rolled into one. I soaked in the energy of the city and fuelled my day with it before retreating to my apartment at night to recharge. You pay to live in New York, because it’s New York and I, for one, found that city to be everything it promised and more. 

Mumbai is not New York. And I begrudge paying New York prices to live somewhere that is most definitely not New York. Between the pollution, the heat and the monsoon, life is not meant to be lived outside for at least 6 months of the year. Even when the weather or the air quality is conducive to leaving the house, the appeal is just not there. The millions of people, the chaotic traffic, the lack of green spaces, the unwalkable pavements and the inconsistency of the restaurants makes hiding away from Mumbai the more emotionally stabilising choice. I see home as a shelter from the swirling tempest of Mumbai: in New York it was essentially a cupboard to store my clothes. I tread carefully to avoid the quicksand in Mumbai, whereas I was running to keep pace with New York.

But still, here we are and here we must find somewhere to live. 

My search began in true Mumbai fashion: within my own network. Putting out feelers among the school mums I gathered a collection of real estate agents with whom people I know personally had had a not-too-terrible experience. There are various websites that claim to be the most popular number one best place to look for up-to-date real estate listings but, how do I put this? They lie. Listings are almost always unavailable and only serve as a hook to get you to hand over your phone number. If something is available, the photos are not actually from the same unit - or even from the same building, in some cases. The safest way to avoid the rollercoaster of intrigue, crushing disappointment, intrigue and then irritation at being pestered by unvetted real estate agents pushing you to visit places way out of your budget range or way under your quality expectations, is to go with a recommended agent. One of whom, in a classic case of what a small world Mumbai is, is also a school mum in our year group. 

While I had a few people out sourcing properties for me to inspect, I drafted up a little begging profile. A ‘profile’ comprises a handful of words that communicate: Pick us! We are classy and tidy and definitely going to pay our rent on time. As a prospective tenant, you are very much the lesser being, because all the power rests with the landlords in Mumbai. They can choose exactly who they want to rent their apartment to: foreigners or Indians, individuals or corporates (who pay a full year up front) and even veg or non-veg tenants. One property I viewed was even specifying only foreigners who are in C-suite positions. Elsewhere in the world we might call this discrimination. But here in Mumbai we just shrug and say, ‘OK’. I actually can’t really complain. Being a small, foreign family on visas from a respected multinational company, we benefit a lot from discrimination, although I suppose I have no idea what I miss out on by not being vegetarian. I am pretty sure the agents themselves take one look at us and realise we eat more than just vegetables and so I have never even been shown a meat-free apartment. 

While we want to believe that our current landlord, who told us in early January that he intends to sell our apartment, genuinely wants to sell rather than just wanting to increase the rent, there is a small chance it's not true. He told us he wanted to test the market and see if anyone will offer the number he has in mind; a surprisingly open, honest communication which might have led to nothing at all. For us, however, as expats who spend half our lives doing visa renewals, foreigner registration forms and proving our address, not knowing if a move were on the horizon would have left too much uncertainty as we planned our travel and renewals for the year. And so we pulled the plug, serving our notice and looking to stabilise our living arrangements with a fresh contract. When we told friends and agents the reason for us looking to move, however, the eyes all rolled and the immediate question was, ‘Does he really want to sell though?’ And it does happen. We’ve had friends whose rent was suddenly doubled with a ‘pay it or you’re out’ kind of greeting. We’ve had friends who have moved out of a place that was being ‘sold’ only to see it back on the rental market at a much higher price a few weeks later. And again, all we can do is shrug and say, ‘OK’.

In the early days of my search, I enthusiastically set myself the task of viewing as broad an array of places as I could. I wanted to explore different approaches to life in Mumbai: dropping the sports facilities (now that we have those covered by our club membership) in favour of a greater square-footage; a northerly commute versus a southerly one; a small community with a handful of neighbours in contrast to our current ten thousand strong hoard. These were alternative Mumbai lifestyles lived by many of Jasper’s school friends, briefly explored by Dylan when he first arrived here, and promised by several agents in our initial discussions. Until they started digging into their databases and opening the doors to some of the older, lower apartment blocks. 

The first place I saw had been one enormous residence and was in the process of being split into two smaller flats. The smaller of the two, which I was viewing, was, in fact not really an apartment at all. It was what had been the ‘granny flat’ side of the floor plan and one of the listed two bedrooms was literally on the balcony. For Jasper to come out of what would be his room, he would have to walk across the balcony and in through the front door. Sure, it was spacious, had a walk-in wardrobe and lots of natural light, but 50% of the bedrooms were NOT EVEN IN THE APARTMENT! Plus, it was way over our budget. 

The second one reminded me of homes I had in Beijing 20 years ago. Built-in wardrobes and mirror-backed trinket cabinets were adorned with ugly, purplish, floral motifs; the floor marble too, except in black. Fixed beds had cushioned bedheads, wallpapers were patterned and textured, and the ‘wet room’ bathrooms could have been as old as me. The windows were small by modern standards and the whole place had a kind of yellowing hue to it, probably coming from the aging glass and the souls of the old people who had never really left. The kitchen was a thoroughfare between the maid’s bathroom and the living room, with no space for an oven or microwave — nor for a grown-up fridge, for that matter. All in all, it was not the place for us, and I hope no fresh-off-the-boat expat falls into this version of Mumbai life because it will be full of regret, and probably some plumbing issues. 

I trudged on over the course of a few weeks and many hours. I saw a place with a private garden which made me realise there is no version of me who wants to have a snake-catcher on speed dial. I saw one with a showstopping open kitchen which reminded me that we aren’t really big on hosting here in Mumbai. I was briefly seduced by beautiful, colonial exteriors until I saw how the soft, grey dust of the city breezed in through the gaps in the windows, and realised that all versions of me will value the ability to seal Mumbai out. I saw places that made me nostalgic for the old me living in Yangon with its teak shutters and high ceilings. I saw places that I wanted to leave the moment I set foot inside. I saw places I instantly knew would anger me forever for how overpriced they were. I saw a place directly opposite the world’s most expensive private residence, home to the billionaire Ambani family and baulked at the idea of flinging open my living room shutters in the morning to be greeted by a tank and several armed soldiers, eyes questioning my PJs.

The more I saw, the more I came to understand that my choice wasn’t between square feet or swimming pools. My choice was old versus new. Old means low rise, with an address that might impress an Old Mumbaiker. New means high rise in a part of town that didn't really exist ten years ago, with dense, community living that, on reflection, I’ve actually come to appreciate. And so I returned to our postcode and revised my brief to look for something similar to where we are now. I saw every apartment block within a two kilometre radius, including the other buildings within our current compound. I was tempted by bigger kitchens, balconies, newer-looking gyms and emptier swimming pools. I was put off by playgrounds in carparks, construction sites next door, impractical commutes for Dylan and strange configurations with no obvious location for a dining table. 

When it comes to house-hunting, an important difference between Dylan and me is where in the process our optimism sits. Dylan is eternally optimistic that something truly great is just around the next corner. He wants to keep looking, keep looking, keep looking. Every time I came home deflated at what I’d seen, he would pump me back up and send me out again, confident that I just hadn’t seen everything yet. My optimism, on the other hand, is further down the line. I believe — no — I KNOW, that whichever place we end up in will feel like home because, as the homemaker Indian immigration believes me to be, I have made homes before and I will make homes again. Our first home in Yangon had intermittent electricity, a mosque that called right in through our single-glazed windows, a water pump we had to switch on ourselves but which we often forgot and so ended up taking bucket showers, and a doorman who committed a murder. We loved it. When Dylan saw himself helping me to expand my search, I saw him wasting time scouring the useless websites. When he saw me giving up, I saw me being decisive. I knew we’d be happy anywhere. And ultimately, our decision was largely dictated by price.

So, where are we moving to? Well, after all that, we are moving 7 floors up and about 100 metres over, into the tower we’ve had as our view for the past 2 years — within the same compound. Our commute is the same, Jasper’s playground is the same, our local shops and restaurants are the same, only our parking spaces will move and our access cards will look different. Is this a satisfying resolution to weeks of searching? No, it most certainly is not. Does the property feel like good value for money? No, we are losing a bedroom, our washing machine will no longer be properly inside the apartment, and will still end up paying more than we do currently by the end of our lease. Am I excited to move? Weirdly, yes, because a fresh, new two-year lock-in means I don’t have to think about house-hunting again until 2028. At which point that version of us will almost certainly be well and truly priced out of Mumbai: in spite of all the construction.