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India makes progress with real estate transparency


India has made good progress in terms of making its real estate sector more transparent, according to a new report.

Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) and LaSalle Investment Management (LSIM) published their 2010 Commercial Real Estate Transparency Index earlier this week, stating that Australia's is the clearest in the world.

However, a handful of countries have improved, including India, China and Romania.

Declines were registered in Bahrain, Dubai, Kuwait, Pakistan and Venezuela - although these were all "modest" drops, the report said.

Overall, real estate players have concentrated on surviving the recent economic turbulence rather than advancing in the market, explained Jacques Gordon, LSIM global head of strategy.

"Transparent real estate caused problems for investors during the credit crisis because it had been put into opaque vehicles," he added. "Debt transparency is generally lagging behind overall real estate transparency."

Within the Asia Pacific region and specifically India and China, three cities moved up a transparency tier - Indonesia, Chinese secondary cities and Indian tertiary cities.

The report's publication follows further data analysis from JLL earlier this year, in which it predicted an improvement in real estate transaction volumes across the globe during 2010.