The economic slowdown has hit home sales and sent prices plummeting. The flip side: home rents have shot up.

Rents went up by around 30% in major cities, including Delhi and the national capital region last year, as more and more consumers, hit by the slowdown, preferred living in rented houses to investing huge sums to buy properties, industry officials said.

'The slowdown has fuelled the rental market. On an average, the residential rental has gone up 30% in the last one year in Delhi and NCR. In many areas, it went up even 50%,' Rajesh Goenka, chairman of Axiom Estates, the London-headquartered provider of property services in India, said.

Times of India