Nidhi Gupta
All of this, Kewalramani announces with a flourish from the balcony, could be yours for the small price of “sirf Rs 120 crores”. Among the top comments under this reel: “station se kitta door hai”; “Scroll karte karte aukaat se baahar nikal gayi”; and “I wonder who buys houses after seeing these reels”.
I look up at my 950 sqft, 1BHK apartment in Calangute, Goa—my first real estate acquisition as I near 40, even as I continue to rent in Mumbai where I work and live—bought with a generous loan from my father and a pretty expensive one from the bank. I consider the year it took to find something that made the heart soar but also fit my modest budget, and the months of work it has taken to get this 15-year-old house into working shape by redoing the kitchenette, waterproofing the ceiling, fixing the ACs and plumbing—and still having more to do.
I think about the sheer amount of patience and many flights it has taken my partner and me to tackle the unmovable behemoth that is Goa’s bureaucratic system. And I too wonder: Why am I suddenly seeing luxury real estate on Instagram that I can never afford, sandwiched between a stream of DIY interior design #inspo and affordable Goa travel updates?
“See, people in the age group of 18 to 44 have made up almost 90% of my viewers in the last 30 days,” says Kewalramani, who has 1.1 million followers on Instagram and gets recognised on the streets far too frequently for his own comfort these days. Over a Zoom call on a Sunday morning, he is holding up his phone after chiding me for not calling him when I was on the hunt for property in Goa. I tell him I couldn’t afford him. He says he has been focusing his energies on that 50-70 lakh space for apartment listings in Goa because that band has the highest demand. “Just like there are all kinds of properties, there are all kinds of viewers—the edutainment seekers, the aspirational folks, the affluent ones who will actually convert to buyers, and those who are here just for the shock and awe value. Those are most likely not my buyers.”