ET Wealth | Buying house in gated society? 4 checks
O HMO tenant Shobhit Tiwari, 34, moved into a gated community in Bengaluru’s Whitefield expecting modern conveniences. However, he encountered discoloured water for two to three weeks, forcing residents to use bottled water and raising concerns about poor water quality. Two to three children were reportedly hospitalised due to the issue. Tiwari believes the experience would have influenced his decision to purchase the property.
This scenario is not an isolated case. It highlights an emerging problem in many rapidly expanding residential complexes in India. With hundreds or thousands of families living in multiple towers and numerous amenities, some gated communities fail to deliver basic services residents expect. Issues range from poor maintenance and frequent lift breakdowns to high costs of common facilities. Residents often pay exorbitant maintenance charges but receive ineffective or delayed resolution from management.
India is experiencing an unprecedented scale of residential construction, with 265 large projects comprising over 1,000 units launched across top seven cities from 2021 to the first half of 2026. These projects account for nearly 4.8 lakh units of new supply. Hyderabad leads with 73 such projects, followed by the NCR with 55 and Bengaluru with 51. Rising land prices and scarcity of large urban parcels push developers towards larger, denser projects.
However, experts argue that the issues faced by residents are not solely due to the height of the buildings. Nilabh Nagar, an urbanist and Principal Architect, emphasizes that the real problem lies in the lack of matching infrastructure for the large number of tenements in a confined area. Akhil Saraf, Founder and CEO of Reloy, points out that well-managed gated communities can be oases within weak urban infrastructure, providing solutions like sewage treatment plants, garbage conversion, and power backup systems.
The real question is whether these infrastructure and management systems can keep pace with the growing population.
Written by urgent.news from The Economic Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
