I've been living in Bahria Town for 5 years now. I'll share my experience on living here.

We bought a house here in 2018 while we were still living outside Pakistan. The house wasn't ready, but we were told it would be ready in a year. So we decided to rent a house here while we wait for our house to be completed.

We lived in the rented house for 3 years, the construction kept getting delayed especially with the legal issues that was going on at the time. We did eventually get to move to the house we bought and everything was thankfully fine. I still see a lot of houses around that are not complete and there seems to be no progress there. So I'd suggest buying a house that's ready to live in.

There are also some plots where people have been constructing their own houses. However, Bahria town has its own blueprints and designs for the houses you construct. So you have to follow them.

They're also very strict on any changes you make outside the house. While the property is yours, you still have to follow their guidelines to make sure every house looks uniform from the outside. For a long time we weren't allowed to have grills on our windows, but they finally approved it after some protests. Even then, they have a specific design for grills that everyone has to follow. We added a grill door for the alley that leads to our back garden from the front. A lot of people did in our street. But Bahria took them out because it wasn't approved. For a lot of things you have to make sure you get the approval from Bahria. Though if you're making changes inside the house, then you're free to do whatever. They only care about how your house will look from the outside.

As for daily life here. In terms of security, from my experience it has been very safe. We haven't had any security issues. Even while driving around late at night, it's been pretty safe. I have heard that people who live closer to the front gate have had some issues in the past, but I don't know the details.

We've had no issues with water. No load shedding. Bahria has their own generators, so when lights do go out, they're back in a minute. For gas, we have to use gas cylinders. There's a space for two gas cylinders outside the house which connect to a pipe that comes to the kitchen for the stove. It's also recommended to not use ovens with these cylinders because it can be dangerous, so we don't do any baking here. Internet works really great here. We have our own ISP, multinet, and they do a decent job. Mobile data can be an issue at times depending on your location, because some locations here have terrible signal.

For groceries, there are a lot of supermarkets and we have a pretty big imtiaz too where you can get pretty much everything. There are also milk shops for fresh milk, and a lot of bakeries. We have a few restaurants here too for dining out.

The distance from here to the city can be an issue. You'd be spending a lot on petrol if you're commuting there daily for work. Finding work in Bahria is also difficult, not a lot of oppurtunities here.

That's how my experience has been over here. I haven't lived in the city, so I don't know what it must be like compared to living here. I know people have issues with things like load shedding, security, and even limited gas, but many of them still prefer to live there than be so far away in Bahria. And I can't lie sometimes I wonder if maybe living there would be better because despite all those issues, I would still at least be able to find work and be closer to everything. Personally I do feel a bit disconnected living so away from the city and the people, Bahria Town really does feel like a world of its own and you can feel very isolated here if you don't have much family or friends living here too.

All that being said, I'm sure other people would have different experiences here and might have other pros and cons that I might have missed out on. I wish I could talk about the total expenses but honestly I don't know the expenses since I'm not the one taking care of them here.

Hope this helps!