Determinants of Residential Property-Type Preferences in Meerut: A Comprehensive Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Learning the residential property preference will be valuable when planning urban development in the fast growing Tier-II Indian cities. This paper explores the factors that influence the decisions of homebuyers between apartments and independent built-up houses in Meerut, a city that is undergoing a massive transformation in terms of demography and infrastructures changes. Purposive sampling strategy was used to survey 500 respondents in big residential clumps. The analysis is combined using the demographic profiling, descriptive statistics, and testing hypothesis using Pearson correlation and binary logistic regression. Although, the results also show that 54 percent of the participants are fond of apartments meaning that there is also coming out towards vertical urban housing structures. The paper considers such determinants as security, location, transport accessibility, proximity to workplace, maintenance facilities, and community amenities as essential factors in property- type preference. The outcome of correlation shows that there are strong and positive correlations between locational attributes and apartment preference (p < .01). Additional results obtained using logistic regression show that security, maintenance assistance, and lifestyle facilities are key predictors of the chances of living an apartment, as opposed to an independent house (p <.05). The research adds value to the scarcity of empirical literature related to Tier-II urban house selection and offers practical information to the developer, policymaking, and planning community interested in creating residential neighborhoods based on the needs of the demand in the new urban areas and ensuring their sustainability.