India still ranks lowest in realty transparency, says study

India still scores the lowest among countries in Asia Pacific in the transparency of its real estate transaction process, said a new study. This is due to high costs of investment transactions, weak professional standards for local agents.

However, the country has seen moderate improvements in overall transparency scores for tier I and II cities (mainly in market fundamentals) and limited gains for tier III cities, according to global property consultant JLL's eighth Global Real Estate Transparency Index.

JLL has not provided India rankings among 102 countries it took for the study. The UK and US tops the ranking as the first and second highest transparent realty markets respectively in the index.

Jeremy Kelly, Director - global research, JLL said: "The primary cities in India have shown modest improvements in transparency over the past two years, mainly due to advancement in market data availability. Progress has nonetheless been the strongest in the Asia Pacific region, with Indian cities starting to make up for lost ground against other BRIC markets, where progress has been weaker".

Kelly said that JLL expects momentum in transparency improvements to build over the next two years. "For example, India is likely to enact the Real Estate Regulation Bill, which seeks to improve regulation over real estate agents and the quality of land registry records. More generally, India could see faster improvements in real estate transparency, with the new government undoubtedly in a stronger position to push through economic reforms."