Source: News18 ( https://bit.ly/3A06mI3 )

India’s real estate market transparency is among the top-10 most-improved markets globally, according to JLL’s 2022 Global Real Estate Transparency Index (GRETI). India’s improvement in transparency score from 2.82 to 2.73 between 2020 and 2022 is higher than some of the highly transparent markets such as Canada, Belgium and Spain.

The improvement in India is on the back of digitisation and data availability for transaction processes in addition to overall market fundamentals, JLL said in a statement.

It added, “India’s improvement in transparency is reinforced by increased institutional investment and the growing numbers of real estate investment trusts (REITs) helping to broaden market data and bring more professionalization to the sector to complement regulatory initiatives like the Model Tenancy Act, and digitisation of land registries and market data, such as through the Dharani and Maha RERA platforms.”

Radha Dhir, CEO and country head (India) at JLL, said the move towards greater transparency in India will intensify investor interest and bolster occupier confidence, and as a result, the country will see more capital deployment as it demonstrates consistent efforts to make accurate data available, enforce legal protections for property ownership, and enhance the regulatory environment to facilitate the transactions.

“Regulatory changes in the Indian real estate sectors like RERA and digitization in all transaction processes have led to a more sanitized and transparent data availability helping the country make tremendous progress in the index,” Dhir added.

She also said sustainability continues to be the key focus for the world going ahead and India has taken great strides in sustainability in the past years. However, there is a need for a more concerted and congruent thought process and action plan to bring sustainability into the mainstream.

Sustainability Needs Sustained Thinking

JLL said that to be able to move to the coveted Transparent list, from the present Semi-Transparent list, the country needs to improve sustainability tracking. Sustainability has not been one of the major areas for change over the last couple of years for India, but investors and occupiers are driving this change.

Improvement in Transaction Process

This was the parameter on which India’s score improvement was the highest in GRETI 2022. Given the regulatory initiatives, and better and deeper data availability, access to asset information has improved to a great extent. With reforms also creating the push for better professional standards for property agents and an environment for weeding out illicit finance through stringent anti-money laundering regulations, the transaction process in India has become more transparent and meaningful.

Interest in Alternative Real Estate Assets

Diversification remains a core theme for many investors in the Asia-Pacific. Institutional capital, such as that controlled by asset managers, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, is active in alternative real estate sectors in nearly two-thirds of the markets tracked. That means expectations for transparency across niche property types like lab space, data centers, or student housing have grown.

Looking Ahead

JLL said transparency and sustainability are now colliding to create new, insightful, and game-changing trends for the real estate industry. Standardized sustainability measurement metrics will make it easier to benchmark assets globally.