Infinia hands over in 2030. A resale flat a kilometre away hands over in six weeks. Once you add four years of rent or EMI to the new-build price, the gap is far narrower than most buyers assume — and sometimes it closes entirely.

The comparison people skip

Buyers routinely compare a new-build price against a resale price and stop there. That comparison is incomplete, because the two purchases do not deliver at the same time.

If you buy Infinia today you keep paying for wherever you currently live until 2030. If you are renting at ₹80,000 a month, that is roughly ₹38 lakh over four years. If you are servicing an EMI on a flat you intend to sell, it is the interest portion of those payments.

So the real comparison is: resale price plus registration plus renovation, against Infinia’s all-in price plus four years of carrying cost. Doing it the lazy way makes the new build look ₹30 to 40 lakh cheaper than it is.

There is a second omission that runs the other way, and it is only fair to name it. The new building will be four years younger than the resale flat on the day you move in, and twenty years younger than it at the point you eventually sell. That is worth real money. The exercise below is not an argument for resale; it is an argument for putting both columns on the same page with every line filled in, which almost nobody does.

Where the new build genuinely wins

Three things, and they are not trivial.

Parking. Older Koramangala buildings commonly give one space or none, and street parking in the area has become genuinely difficult. A planned basement solves a problem that gets worse every year and cannot be retrofitted.

Building systems. A 1990s building has 1990s plumbing, wiring, lifts and waterproofing. Some have been upgraded; many have not. Replacing risers or a lift in an occupied building is expensive, disruptive and requires agreement from every owner.

Density and open space. Infinia’s roughly 42 homes an acre with planned landscape is a different living experience from a 1990s block built to the plot edges with a strip of driveway.

There is a fourth, less obvious one: warranty and recourse. A new sale carries a defect liability period under RERA, during which the developer must fix structural and workmanship problems at its own cost. Buy a twenty-five year old flat and every defect is yours from the day you take the keys, including ones the seller knew about and did not mention.

Where resale wins

Time. You move in next month. Four years is a long time in a family’s life, and plans change.

Space per rupee. Older Koramangala flats were often generously planned, with low loading because the super built-up convention had not yet been stretched. A 1,600 sq ft flat from 1998 can have more usable floor than a 1,900 sq ft flat sold today.

No GST. This is the one most buyers miss. GST does not apply to a completed property. On Infinia’s entry price the GST line alone is ₹21.5 lakh. Buy a ready resale flat and that line disappears entirely.

Certainty. You can see exactly what you are buying, walk the actual flat, meet the neighbours and inspect the building after twenty-five years of weather. No render, no show flat, no declared completion date to worry about.

A worked comparison

Round numbers, to show the method rather than to predict your situation.

Infinia entry: ₹4.3 Cr agreement value, plus about ₹54.18 lakh in statutory charges, giving ₹4.84 Cr all-in. Add four years of rent at ₹80,000 a month — ₹38.4 lakh — and your effective outlay by handover is around ₹5.22 Cr, before floor rise, parking and deposits.

A ready resale 3 BHK at ₹4 Cr: no GST, stamp duty and associated charges of roughly 7.6% is about ₹30.4 lakh, so ₹4.30 Cr registered. Add ₹25 lakh for a thorough renovation and you are at ₹4.55 Cr, occupied next month.

That is a ₹67 lakh gap in the resale flat’s favour on these assumptions — before accounting for the fact that the new build will be worth more in 2030. Change the inputs and the answer changes. The point is to run it with your own numbers rather than assume.

What would tip it towards Infinia

Several things, and they are real.

If you already own in Koramangala and are trading up, you are not paying rent during construction — you live in your current flat and sell it near handover. That removes the single largest item in the comparison above.

If you are buying for fifteen or twenty years, a new building bought at 2026 prices and held to 2045 is usually the better asset than a thirty-year-old one, because the resale flat will be fifty years old by then and the structural questions get harder.

If parking is a dealbreaker — two cars, or a car you will not leave on the street — many older buildings simply cannot accommodate you at any price.

And if construction standard matters to you, a Sobha building new is a different product from an unbranded 1990s block, however well maintained.

How to actually run this

Do not do it in your head. Open a spreadsheet and put both options in it with every line.

For the new build: agreement value, GST, stamp duty, cess, surcharge, registration, floor rise, parking, deposits, legal, maintenance advance, and carrying cost until handover. For the resale: price, stamp duty and registration, legal, renovation, any pending dues or corpus transfer, and whatever the building needs in the next five years.

Then view three resale flats before deciding. Not one — three. Buyers who have actually walked the alternative make this decision very differently from those who assumed resale meant tired. Some older Koramangala flats are superb. Some are not. You cannot tell from a listing, and the decision is worth a Saturday.

Figures from Sobha’s own project page, read 3 October 2026, and from Karnataka RERA filings. Statutory rates verified 3 October 2026 and subject to change. Nothing here is an offer or a contract — verify any registration number on the Karnataka RERA portal.