– by Anil Pharande, Chairman – Pharande Spaces

For most Indians, buying a home is the biggest investment they’ll ever make, so it makes sense to get the best options they can afford. Branded builders offer aspirational premium through high-quality homes and locations, but the idea of premium features is itself changing quickly. Wellness has become a top priority since COVID-19, which was the worst healthcare crisis in history.

Wellness – The New Luxury

Luxury homes have always been known for their high-end features. But before COVID-19, “luxury” in real estate shifted from snob value to family health and well-being. ‘Real’ wellness goes beyond just adding features – it needs to be built into the basic design of a housing project.

As a rule, people who buy homes in cities now expect garden spaces, gyms in clubhouses, and jogging tracks. These kinds of features have slowly made their way into mid-range homes as well, but they are at their most evolved in luxury integrated townships and gated communities.

Wellness is now a highly established requirement for luxury project design. Branded developers quickly saw that this trend is not just a passing fad but here to stay and started adding the right features into their projects. It makes strong business sense, as the wellness features in a housing or office building make it more appealing to buyers, tenants, and investors.

Gyms, yoga and meditation rooms, roof gardens, and innovative design tweaks to boost natural light availability and air flow are some of the most popular wellness features today. As we take this to the luxury level, new requirements emerge – HNIs now expect homes with art studios, hobby rooms, yoga studios, meditation rooms, spas, indoor air filtration systems, and landscaped Zen gardens and tennis courts within the project.

Golf courses within the project are another very popular wellness-oriented feature. Golf boosts health by providing physical activity that boosts cardiovascular fitness, muscle tone, and also helps with weight management. It has been proven to improve mental wellness because it lowers anxiety and stress, promoting mindfulness and focus. It also fosters social connections, decreasing feelings of isolation and boosting self-esteem. Indian cities with housing projects featuring golf courses include Gurugram, Bengaluru, Pune, the MMR – specifically Panvel and Navi Mumbai, Noida and Greater Noida, Chennai, and Delhi NCR.

Luxury wellness projects also need official stamps of approval like the U.S. Green Buildings Council’s LEED certification programme, which looks at and rates a building’s ‘green’ features and how much the wellness features in a development actually boost inhabitants’ health and overall wellbeing.

Affordable Health Strategies for Indian Homebuyers

So far, so good. We have discussed wellness as a single ‘feature’, multiple features, or more accurately, as a theme. Obviously, wellness features come at an added cost, since they require more reserved common space which cannot be exploited commercially by building more marketable housing units. Also, specific facilities that need to be equipped and maintained.

Roughly, depending on the market positioning of the project, wellness features and facilities can add a premium of anywhere between 10% and 25% to the final price of a home there, raise monthly maintenance charges, and may also involve club memberships. The added cost is enough to deter a large chunk of health-conscious but budget-strapped homebuyers in India.

So, what can such buyers do to ensure that their new home supports their family’s health?

10 Affordable Tips for Homebuyers Who Care About Their Health

1. Prioritize natural light and airflow in your housing choice

Pick a home with lots of windows and cross-ventilation, even if it isn’t in high-end wellness developments. Natural light helps you sleep better and feel better, and good airflow cuts down on indoor air pollution, and both are free. Put mirrors across from windows to spread light more evenly. Also, try to pick a unit that doesn’t face a main road to avoid as much air and noise pollution as possible.

2. Buy plants that clean the air inside

Instead of costly air filtration systems, buy spider plants, snake plants, and similar varieties of houseplants that clean and increase the amount of oxygen in the air while simultaneously enlivening the room. They are cheap, easy to take care of, and good for your health without costing a lot.

3. Set up a space in your home to work out and meditate

Designate and equip a corner with simple things like yoga mats, exercise bands, and dumbbells. This puts paid to pricey gym memberships or club fees and lets you follow a fitness regimen at your pace and in the privacy of your own home. Use the same space as a meditation nook and use it for that purpose each morning before the rest of the family rises.

4. Turn the kitchen into a healthier place

Place nutritious foods at eye level, hide unhealthy snacks out of sight and easy reach, and stock up on pulses, brown rice, frozen vegetables, fresh fruits, stevia and healthy cooking oil to turn your kitchen into a place that supports instead of wrecks your family’s health. Spruce up your culinary skills and learn how to steam, bake and poach foods and make your peace with staying away from deep-fried goodies and sugary diabetes bombs.

5. Make affordable wellness-oriented interior decor tweaks

Choose inexpensive but comfortable chairs, paint your walls with calming colours; and deck them up with inspiring art to turn your entire home into a visually peaceful, destressing space.

6. Use water filters strategically

You don’t need a whole-house water filtration system. Affordable water filters in the kitchen and on showerheads ensure that the water you drink, cook with, and bathe in is safe without being expensive. Clean water is important for all aspects of health.

7. Declutter relentlessly

Physical clutter is incredibly stress-inducing, but we tend to fill our living spaces with needless and often obsolete and even harmful junk. Give away or sell stuff you don’t need – when we open up our living spaces this way, our minds follow suit and the spirit can breathe again. The Japanese call decluttering “danshari” – letting go of unnecessary items that crowd our lives. Regular decluttering costs nothing – in fact, it benefits others who may need what we don’t – and does wonders for our emotional wellbeing.

8. Optimize your sleep environment

Spend a little bit more on a good mattress and some comfortable bedding, use blackout curtains, and play sleep music over your Alexa to help you drift off and stay asleep longer. You don’t need fancy bedroom furniture to have a good night’s sleep; the basics will do.

9. Make regular family health check-ups mandatory

Preventive healthcare doesn’t need fancy buildings or features. Regular health exams, immunisations, and family health talks are much cheaper than treating illnesses, and fit easily into daily life.

10. Use local community wellness resources

If possible, choose a home close to a park, garden or public jogging track instead of paying for expensive premium club memberships. Join local health programes, yoga classes and laughter clubs in parks, and similar resources.

Your best bet for finding a home that supports your family’s overall wellbeing lies in integrated townships. Homes in such projects do cost a bit more, but most of the wellness facilities and features that one finds in luxury developments are available there. Because integrated townships have large populations, the cost of these facilities is spread over many more owners and therefore cost less thanks to the economies of scale.

Finally, even a low saturation of wellness amenities in a housing project is better than none at all. If your budget allows it, choose a project which has some green open space and a jogging track or path. The marginal extra cost is well worth it, both from a wellness and eventual resale perspective.

About the author:

Anil Pharande is Chairman of Pharande Spaces, a leading real estate construction and development firm famous for its township projects in Greater Pune and beyond. Pharande Promoters & Builders, the flagship company of Pharande Spaces and an ISO 9001-2000 certified company, is a pioneer of townships in the region. With the recent inclusion of Puneville Commercial into one of its most iconic townships, Pharande Spaces taken a major step towards addressing Pune’s current and future requirements for fully integrated residential-commercial convenience.