JLL’s Global Real Estate Transparency Index 2024: India Insights
India transitions to the 'Transparent' tier and emerges as the top global improver with significant strides in data coverage and regulatory reforms
- Rohan Sharma
JLL’s Global Real Estate Transparency Index 2024 edition shows that transparency has improved across most countries and territories, but the top group of ‘Highly Transparent’ markets have registered the strongest progress and continue to pull away from the rest. This has been made possible as they set new benchmarks for technology integration, deeper data availability and climate reporting.
Beyond the ‘Highly Transparent’ countries, several major markets that have made progress and are focused on enabling higher levels of institutionalization – including India and Mainland China’s leading cities and South Korea in Asia Pacific, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region – offer strong long-term prospects.
On the whole, countries in Asia Pacific have recorded the strongest average transparency improvements since 2022, led by the region’s most transparent and largest markets.
India is the top global improver, with greater data coverage and improved quality across both core and niche property sectors – ranging from industrial to data centers – as institutionalization in the market increases. A more proactive financial regulator, new climate risk disclosure guidelines, streamlined building regulations and digitized land records have also contributed to its leading cities entering the ‘Transparent’ tier for the first time ever.
Among the main six sub-indices, India has seen varying improvements in its score.
In Transaction Process, India breaks into the top 10 countries highlighting the increasing improvement driven by rising institutional participation and greater access to asset and portfolio level information
For Market Fundamentals, consistent improvement amid reduction in information asymmetry with multiple data providers and tech platforms energizing data accessibility has pushed India to be ranked 12th globally in this parameter.
Even in other parameters, India has made strides but needs to do a bit more to really push itself.
In the Regulatory and Legal parameter, greater enforceability and resolution mechanisms are visible with regulatory changes like RERA, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, distressed project funding and arbitration and reconciliation. There is an overall improvement in protection of domestic investor interest. While India’s composite score has improved, there is still scope for efficient and faster dispute resolution.
Coming to the parameter of Governance of Listed Vehicles, the REIT market performance and growth is a big positive and the emergence of SM REITs supports market growth, but a long runway lies ahead.
India has definitely made rapid strides in the Sustainability parameter, but a greater push is needed for implementation of climate related and asset-level energy use disclosures and real efforts towards net-zero commitments.
Finally in the Performance Measurement parameter, standardised market valuation practices and regulations for REITs allow for better market-based approaches while REITs themselves are setting high standards in data reporting.
Greater investments are flowing in as market processes are maturing in line with global standards but there is still a long way to go for growth of the institutional market relative to the overall listed RE market.
There are sustained efforts needed for India’s push towards the next transparency tier. These include the adoption of more detailed investment performance indices, enriched data coverage for alternative sectors and comprehensive information on real estate financing. Along with these, accessibility of public beneficial ownership records and intensifying commitment to ESG including the reporting of nature-related risks, resilient building standards and the adoption of green leases are essential for India to move up the Transparency ratings.
