25 years in Real Estate – What has changed, what remains constant

Twenty-five years is long enough that I sometimes have to pause and do the arithmetic to believe it myself. When I started out in real estate, the industry looked nothing like it does today – not in scale, not in sophistication, and certainly not in the way capital moved through it. And yet, as I reflect on the journey, what strikes me as much as the change is how much has stayed exactly the same.

I think that tension between transformation and continuity is worth examining honestly, because it tells you something about what actually drives long-term success in this industry.

Where it began

My early years in real estate were spent learning the business in a way that I do not think is entirely possible anymore which is through long hours on the ground, in conversations with developers and landowners who operated almost entirely on relationships and word of mouth, and through transactions that moved at a pace dictated by trust rather than process. There was no data room, no comparable transaction database, no structured way to benchmark a deal. You built your judgement the hard way, deal by deal, often getting things wrong before you understood why.

I remember the first significant transaction I worked on with a clarity that surprises me, given how much has happened since. Not because of its size; by today's standards, it would barely register but because of how much I learned simply by being in the room, watching how decisions actually got made versus how they were supposed to get made on paper. That gap between theory and practice has stayed with me as one of the most useful lessons of my career.

What has changed

The scale of the industry today is almost unrecognisable from where it started. Indian real estate has moved from being a largely unorganised, family-run business to an industry that institutional capital, both domestic and global, takes seriously as an asset class in its own right. REITs did not exist when I began my career. Today, they are a meaningful part of how commercial real estate is owned and valued. Private equity participation, which was negligible, now runs into billions of dollars annually.

The professionalisation of the sector has been equally significant. Developers today operate with structured finance teams, compliance frameworks, and increasingly, technology-driven processes that would have seemed unnecessary, even excessive, twenty-five years ago. Regulation, particularly post-RERA, has fundamentally altered the relationship between developers and homebuyers, introducing a level of accountability that the industry badly needed and, in many ways, resisted for far too long.

The way deals get done has changed just as much. Information that once took weeks of networking to gather is now available at the click of a button. Due diligence that depended on personal relationships and local knowledge now runs through structured data platforms. The opacity that once defined this industry and that some players profited from, is steadily giving way to transparency, whether the industry has fully embraced that shift or not.

What has not changed

And yet, for all of this transformation, the fundamentals that determine success in real estate have remained remarkably constant. Trust still matters enormously. In an industry where transaction sizes are large, timelines are long, and outcomes depend on the cooperation of multiple parties over years, reputation continues to be the most valuable currency anyone can hold. I have seen technology change how deals are sourced and evaluated, but I have not seen it replace the fundamental requirement of being someone whose word can be relied upon.

Patience, too, remains as essential as it ever was. Real estate does not reward those looking for quick outcomes. The cycles are long, the capital deployed is significant, and the ability to wait out a downturn or hold conviction through a slow market has separated successful players from the rest, regardless of decade.

And perhaps most importantly, the people element of this business has never gone away, despite every prediction that it would be automated or systematised out of relevance. Real estate, at its core, is still about understanding what people want from the spaces they live and work in, and that requires a kind of judgement that no platform, however sophisticated, has fully replicated.

Looking ahead

If the last twenty-five years have taught me anything, it is that the industry will keep changing, often faster than we expect, and that betting against its evolution has rarely been a wise strategy. But I am equally convinced that the qualities that have mattered all along – trust, patience, integrity, judgement, and a genuine understanding of people will continue to matter, regardless of how much technology and capital reshape the landscape around them.

That, to me, is the real lesson of twenty-five years. Not that everything changes, and not that nothing does, but that knowing the difference between the two is what allows you to navigate either with confidence.

Would love to know what you think.