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Pre-Leased Property in Gurgaon: You Are Buying a Lease, Not a Building

By Neev Realty•21 August 2026

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Pre-Leased Property in Gurgaon: The Yield and the Traps

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Pre-leased commercial property is the easiest thing in Gurugram to sell and one of the harder things to buy well. The pitch writes itself — a tenant is already paying, the rent starts the day you register, no vacancy risk, no leasing effort. All of that is true.

What the pitch leaves out is how the price got set. In a pre-leased deal the seller does not price the building. They price the rent, by dividing it by a target yield. Which means the rent determines what you pay — and if that rent is above what the space is really worth, you have overpaid by exactly the same multiple.

That is the whole game. Everything below is how to check it.

How a pre-leased price is actually built

The formula sellers use, whether or not they say so:

Price = annual rent ÷ target yield

So a unit producing Rs 14.4 lakh a year, offered at a 6 percent yield, is priced at Rs 2.4 crore. The same unit at an 8 percent yield is Rs 1.8 crore. The building has not changed. Only the yield the seller thinks you will accept has.

Two consequences follow, and both matter more than anything in the brochure:

A higher rent produces a higher price, mechanically. If the in-place rent is 20 percent above market, the price is 20 percent above what the asset is worth — and the yield on paper looks identical.
The yield you are quoted is a negotiating position, not a market fact. Yields on comparable Gurugram assets vary with the tenant, the lease term remaining and the building. Ask what the quoted yield is based on and you will learn a lot from the answer.

The worked example

M3M SCO, Sector 113 Gurgaon - completed commercial units on Dwarka Expressway — M3M SCO, Sector 113 — completed in July 2023. Finished commercial with a real occupancy record is what makes a pre-leased purchase checkable.

Gurugram office rents run roughly Rs 45 per sq ft per month in New Gurgaon to about Rs 200 in Cyber City, with Grade A generally between Rs 100 and Rs 180. Take a mid-Grade A example:

Line	Amount
Unit	1,000 sq ft
In-place rent	Rs 120 per sq ft per month
Annual rent	Rs 14.4 lakh
Asking price at 6 percent	Rs 2.40 crore
Asking price at 8 percent	Rs 1.80 crore
Less maintenance you bear, property tax, insurance	varies — get it in writing, it is not trivial
Less a vacancy provision	commercial voids are measured in months, not weeks
Less income tax at your slab, after the 30 percent standard deduction	material at the top slab

The gross yield is the number in the advertisement. The number that reaches your bank account is well below it, in the same way our rental yield analysis found for residential — where a 3.6 percent gross became about 2.3 percent banked. Commercial starts from a higher gross, which is precisely why it is worth doing, but the same deductions apply.

The over-rented trap, in detail

This is the failure mode we see most often, and it is invisible on a yield sheet.

Suppose the market rent for comparable space in a building is Rs 100 per sq ft, but the in-place lease was signed at Rs 130 — perhaps at a market peak, perhaps because the tenant negotiated a large fit-out contribution in exchange, perhaps because the seller and tenant have a relationship.

You buy at a 6 percent yield on Rs 130. Three years later the lease comes up for renewal, and the tenant does what any tenant does: they price the alternatives. The rent resets to Rs 100.

Your income falls 23 percent.
Your capital value, if the next buyer also prices at 6 percent, falls 23 percent.
Both happen on the same day.

The defence is simple and almost nobody does it: find out what comparable units in the same building are actually letting for, and get that from an existing tenant or an independent broker rather than from the seller's agent. If the in-place rent is meaningfully above that, either negotiate the price down to market rent divided by your target yield, or walk.

The tenant is the asset

You are not buying a building with a tenant attached. You are buying a stream of payments, and the building is the collateral if the payments stop. So underwrite the tenant like a lender would:

How long have they been there? A tenant who has already renewed once is a far better signal than a new lease signed conveniently just before the sale.
Which entity is on the lease? The operating company or a thinly capitalised subsidiary? The name on the signage tells you nothing about the name on the deed.
Has rent actually been paid on time? Ask for twelve months of bank statements showing the credits. A rent roll typed by the seller is not evidence.
What does the business actually do in that space? A back office can move anywhere. A clinic with regulatory approvals, a bank branch, or a restaurant with a licensed kitchen has switching costs — and switching costs are what make a tenant stay.
How much lease term is left, and how much lock-in? These are different. Term is when it ends; lock-in is how long they cannot leave. A five-year lease with a six-month lock-in is a six-month lease with optimism attached.

The nine documents, in the order we read them

The registered lease deed, with every amendment. If it is unregistered, treat that as a serious defect, not a technicality — an unregistered lease is far weaker if it is ever contested.
The escalation clause. Typically 5 to 8 percent annually or on renewal. A lease with none loses you real income silently every year.
Lock-in and exit clauses, both sides. Including what notice the tenant owes and what penalty applies if they break it.
The security deposit — the amount, who currently holds it, and confirmation it transfers to you at closing. This one causes more disputes at handover than any other line.
The maintenance obligation split. Who pays CAM, who pays for structural repair, who pays when the air conditioning plant fails.
The occupancy or completion certificate for the building.
Property tax receipts, current and clear.
Twelve months of rent credits in the seller's bank statement.
The GST position on the rent, confirmed by your accountant. Commercial rent is treated differently from residential letting and the rules on who accounts for it have changed in recent years.

Our documents checklist covers the title side of any Gurgaon purchase, which applies here in addition to the lease-specific items above.

Pre-leased versus buying under construction

For most investors this is not a close call.

	Pre-leased	Under-construction commercial
Rent	Real, verifiable, starts immediately	Projected by the seller, guaranteed by nobody
Building	You can walk through it	A render
Leasing risk	Deferred to the renewal date	Entirely yours, after completion
Price	Premium, because the certainty is priced in	Lower, because the risk is yours
Main failure mode	Over-rented asset; weak tenant	Completed building at low occupancy

Gurugram has enough finished commercial buildings sitting at thin occupancy to make the point without us labouring it. The premium you pay for an in-place tenant is usually the cheapest risk transfer available in this asset class.

If you would rather buy the earlier-stage version knowingly, the ready-to-move commercial stock is where to start: M3M SCO in Sector 113, Emaar Business District in Sector 114, M3M Urbana in Sector 67, AIPL Joy Central in Sector 65 and Trehan Iris Broadway in Sector 85, which starts from about Rs 26.67 lakh for retail units of 100 to 1,213 sq ft.

Our take

Pre-leased is the sanest commercial entry point for a first-time investor, and it is the one most likely to be mispriced, because the price is a function of a single number that the seller controls the presentation of.

So the discipline is narrow and it is not hard: verify the rent against the market, verify the tenant against their bank credits, and verify the lock-in against the calendar. If all three hold, the yield you are quoted is roughly the yield you will get. If any of the three does not, the yield is fiction regardless of how carefully the spreadsheet was built.

Send us a pre-leased proposal and we will run those three checks before you commit a token. It is the part of the deal where an afternoon saves the most money.

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about this topic.

A property that already has a tenant in place and a lease running when you buy it, so rent starts from the day you take ownership. In Gurgaon it usually means a commercial unit - an office floor, a shop, a bank branch or a showroom - sold with the lease assigned to the new owner. You are stepping into an existing landlord-tenant relationship rather than creating one, which is both the advantage and the risk.

Do the arithmetic on the specific asset rather than trusting a headline. Gurugram office rents run roughly Rs 45 per sq ft per month in New Gurgaon to about Rs 200 in Cyber City, with Grade A generally between Rs 100 and Rs 180. A 1,000 sq ft unit at Rs 120 per sq ft produces Rs 14.4 lakh a year, so a Rs 2.4 crore asking price implies a 6 percent gross yield and Rs 1.8 crore implies 8 percent. Net of maintenance, property tax, a vacancy provision and income tax, expect meaningfully less than the gross figure.

Buying an over-rented asset. Because the sale price is usually derived by dividing the current rent by a target yield, a lease signed above market rent inflates the price you pay. When that lease expires the rent resets towards the market, and both your income and your capital value fall together. Always compare the in-place rent against what comparable units in the same building are actually letting for, from a tenant if possible rather than from the sales desk.

The tenant covenant is the asset, so treat it like a credit decision. Look at how long they have occupied the space, what the business actually does there, whether the entity on the lease is the operating company or a thin subsidiary, and whether rent has been paid on time - ask for bank statements showing the credits, not a rent roll typed by the seller. A multinational on a five-year lease with a three-year lock-in and an unknown company on a rolling arrangement are completely different investments even at the same yield.

The registered lease deed with all amendments, the rent-escalation clause, the lock-in and exit clauses on both sides, the security deposit amount and who transfers it to you, the maintenance obligation split, the completion or occupancy certificate for the building, the property tax receipts, the last twelve months of rent credits, and the GST position on the rent. If the lease is unregistered, treat that as a serious defect rather than a formality - an unregistered lease is much weaker if it is ever contested.

For most investors, yes, and by a wide margin. A pre-leased unit gives you a real, verifiable rent and a building you can walk through, which removes both construction risk and the leasing risk that follows completion. Under-construction commercial is sold on projected rents that nobody guarantees, and Gurugram has plenty of finished commercial buildings sitting at low occupancy to demonstrate the difference. You pay a premium for the certainty; in this asset class it is usually worth it.