Parul (27) and Dinesh Bahirwani (31) speak for thousands of Mumbai’s young couples when they recollect the “big, big high” of moving into their own pad in Santacruz (West) earlier this year, after planning and agonising over minute details of the furnishings for nearly two years.

Married three years ago, the house-hunting began once they realised that prices were not about to dip—at all. “Every Saturday and Sunday, evenings after work, we’d be checking a new place, a new plan,” says Parul. In between running a busy textile trading business together, the couple selected this spacious 1,700-odd sq ft home after looking at nearly 100 flats or elevation drawing—-all in the Bandra-Khar-Santacruz stretch, since it was clear that they wanted to stay in frequent-visit proximity to his parents, who live at Pali Hill.

They moved in mid-year, and find now that prices in the locality are touching Rs 18,000 per square foot, nearly twice what they paid mid-2005. The seven-storey building they live in was once a quaint bungalow—one of the last ones remaining in the area now stands just down the lane, bounded by swanky new multi-storeys, some with two floors of parking space.

“It has a lot to do with luck,” says Dinesh. “God was kind, otherwise so many factors would not have fallen in place—timing, budget, the right house, the right location, the right price, the finance, everything.” Taking a gentle dig at her husband’s deep-rooted belief, Parul adds: “And it wasn’t anti-Vastu.”

Back in the 1970s, Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab wandering through a very different Mumbai from today as they hunted for their ‘ashiana’ in Gharonda became a heart-tugging icon. They were like lakhs of middle-class Mumbaiites who found, once they began house-hunting, that the city that’s supposed to have room for everybody somehow leaves formal housing in the grey areas of rent control, slumlords and speculative prices. The spiralling prices haven’t slowed, and 2008 won’t change that.

But still, young professionals continue to enter the mean streets of real estate investment. It may not surface in realty-research, but the Bahirwanis typify an easily-ignored demand factor—that nuclear families and the double-income-no-kids paradigm are here to stay, especially in cities like Mumbai. “With his parents, it wasn’t so difficult really,” smiles Parul, although the two decided to “move out slowly” so that Dinesh’s parents got used to the idea. “In any case, we needed more space,” Dinesh adds. Even his parents’ roomy Pali Hill flat was a tight fit once he got married.

In the Bahirwanis’ choice of home is also a key Mumbai sub-plot—in Dinesh’s words, “the suburbs are not really suburbs any longer”. New office hubs at Bandra-Kurla Complex and Andheri, the promise of Dharavi’s big makeover, the booming retail routes of Santacruz, Bandra, Andheri, the new five-star hotels being constructed as far as Mulund and yet more malls emerging all along the central suburbs have changed the commercial geography of Mumbai.

The South Mumbai bubble may not have burst, but the amenities of suburban townships are enormous win-wins: Dinesh and Parul drive to work in nearby Andheri, Parul likes being able to “find a rick to anywhere at any time” and chic shopping and eating-out joints are aplenty in nextdoor Bandra and Khar.

“It’s difficult to put things as one-two-three,” protests Dinesh when asked whether the near 100 per cent appreciation of his property value within two years is a bigger high than just having a nest of his own. “We didn’t do up this place to show off, but we wanted to be comfortable in our personal space,” Parul grins. “Friends come over for a drink sometimes, cousins come over, my parents visit often, it’s our house,” Dinesh adds. It’s an added bonus that the investment has doubled its value—”you don’t get such returns from business in such a short period of time.”

For a young entrepreneur, raising finance was something he was on top of. “We couldn’t have done it without finance,” he agrees. “But a loan makes even more sense because the bank then peruses the paperwork, the plans and permissions as well as the title deed.” He says he was lucky to find a builder who played fair, but “it’s common to get duped”. And accessible housing finance is doubling up as some sort of ombudsman against murky realty deals.