EkoStay launches Eko Estates: India’s only second home at a contracted rental yield of up to 10% p.a.

EkoStay, the homestay and villa rental operator with 175+ villas under management and eight years of operating experience, today announced the launch of Eko Estates, a new vertical that builds freehold villas in the Western Ghats and runs them on the owner’s behalf. The launch portfolio comprises six freehold villas at Kawnai, Igatpuri, 600 metres above the sea, priced between ₹2.75 crore and ₹4.80 crore. Two are ready to move and four are due for possession between February and April 2027.

Eko Estates’ positioning is simple: homes designed to earn. Under the Assured Agreement, Eko Estates runs the villa entirely and the owner is paid a contracted rental yield of up to 10 per cent per annum of the purchase price, credited by the 10th of every month for 48 months, whether the house is occupied or empty. The rate is fixed at signing and calculated on the purchase price, not the assessed value. Occupancy risk sits with the company, in writing, for the full term. Owners keep 24 weekday nights a year for themselves. The rental is contracted, not projected, and is paid by Ekostay LLP, the operating entity behind the company’s managed portfolio, rather than a company formed for this project.

For owners who would rather have the house than the rental, there is Private Use: no fixed rental, no lock in, all 365 nights unrestricted, with Eko Estates hosting on a revenue share basis in the weeks they are away. Owners can move to the Assured Agreement at any time. The title is the same document under both options.

Every villa is freehold, registered in the buyer’s name, with the land. Not a share, not a fraction, not a bond. The 7/12 extract and the NA order are open for inspection at any time. Each home comes fully furnished with a private pool, staff quarters, water source and storage, power backup, covered parking, lawn and deck, air conditioning and Wi Fi throughout, specified once across the portfolio. Nothing is an upgrade, a package or an option at the signing table. Each project comprises fewer than eight units and is exempt from registration under MahaRERA Order 25A/2023.

The company frames the launch around a single question: what the same capital actually does elsewhere. A ₹3 crore apartment in Mumbai rents for roughly ₹9 lakh a year, at an annual rate of 2.5 to 3.5 per cent. A commercial unit might do ₹18 lakh, at 5 to 6 per cent, with three to nine vacant months between tenants. A fixed deposit pays about 7 per cent, quarterly, with nothing underneath it. A ₹3.50 crore Eko Estates villa under the Assured Agreement pays ₹35 lakh a year, credited monthly, occupied or not, with land and a freehold house sitting underneath and capital appreciation on top.

Igatpuri was chosen because EkoStay already operates there, so the performance behind these homes is drawn from houses the company runs on the same roads. The valley holds its rate through the monsoon in a way drier markets do not, since the rain is the reason people go, and August is a peak booking month rather than a dead one. Every house is designed around the view, the monsoon and the people in it, with drainage, waterproofing, ventilation and materials chosen to look better after a monsoon, not worse. Non resident Indians and Overseas Citizens of India can buy under the general permission granted by the Reserve Bank of India for residential property, since the land is already converted to non agricultural use.

Varun Arora, Co Founder, EkoStay, said: “Your capital is almost certainly earning less than you think. We’ve run other people’s holiday homes for eight years and we know what they actually earn, and what a Mumbai apartment or a commercial unit earns next to them. A rental that’s contracted and lands on the 10th of every month, full house or empty house, is a different thing from a projection in a brochure. That certainty is what someone is buying. The villa is the thing it comes attached to.”

Husain Khatumdi, Co Founder, EkoStay, said: “The first villas in this portfolio were built to be run, not to be sold, and they’ve been hosting EkoStay guests for over a year. Every house here starts from its plot: where the light falls, where the hills sit, how the rain moves across the land. The rooms open to the view and the pools face the valley. We’re putting our name on the construction because we’re the ones who’ll be living with it, every weekend, for the next four years.”

Sohail Mirchandani, COO and Co Founder, EkoStay, said: “Most of what goes wrong with a house in the Ghats is paperwork. Agricultural land sold as if it were buildable, a title that doesn’t survive a bank’s checklist, a return that was never more than a projection. We’ve removed all of it. Clear and marketable freehold title, the NA order in hand, the 7/12 extract on the table before anyone asks, and a rental paid by the same entity that runs 175 villas. If a buyer’s lawyer wants a week with our documents, that’s exactly what we’d want.”

Zishan Khan, Co Founder, EkoStay, said: “Buyers at this level split cleanly into two groups, and forcing them into one product loses half of them. Some want income, some want weekends. So we run two options, and the second one still lets the house earn. You own the villa outright either way. The only thing that changes is who runs the house, and how it earns while you’re not in it.”

Site visits are open. Igatpuri is about three hours forty minutes from Mumbai, roughly 150 kilometres up the Mumbai Nashik highway through the Kasara ghat, and about twenty minutes by road from Igatpuri station, where the company arranges pickups for owners and guests.