Source: The Hindu Business Line ( https://bit.ly/3Cr2weu )

India stands as an outlier in the global real estate market, which is just returning to normalcy with some uptick in transaction volumes, the confidence coming back with prospects of a reduction in interest rates. “The best performing markets in our network at the moment are India and the Middle East,” Knight Frank’s Senior Partner and Group Chair, William Beardmore-Gray told businessline.

The main handbrake, of course, is interest rates and cost of capital. And the general trend around the world is for central banks to be bringing those rates down. We’ve seen reductions in rates across many markets recently and obviously in the UK.

And once the confidence returns significantly to investors that that is going to be the ongoing trend, there are a lot of people waiting on the sidelines to transact.

It’s not just across offices, it’s across warehousing, residential, and life sciences. That’s what we’re seeing in the Middle East as well.

It’s not just about high-end residential. It’s about development, retail, tourism. Jumping back to India, the question I’ve been asked most in the last 18 months in my travels around the world from investors is about India – and that’s a change. It wasn’t that way five or six years ago.

Institutional investment is coming back into real estate. I think private capital will stay because it’s now much more sophisticated than it was 20 years ago. So, I think that’s going to have a major impact on the markets.