According to a JLL report, the Indian real estate market is becoming more transparent and reliable, with significant growth in investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers. These positive changes could attract major global investors to the Indian real estate market. However, for India to fully realize this potential, it needs to implement several important reforms, including simplifying property-related regulations, broader adoption of new technologies in sales transactions, and ensuring easy access to complete and accurate property information.
The JLL report, based on the Global Real Estate Transparency Index 2026 (GRETI), shows that transparency has significantly improved in two-thirds of the 88 tracked markets and regions. However, the same document notes that the gap in transparency levels between leading and less transparent markets continues to widen.
In the GRETI 2026 survey, the Asia-Pacific region led global improvements in real estate transparency, with half of the ten markets showing the greatest progress belonging to this region. Among them, India took the lead, followed by Vietnam, South Korea, Australia, and Thailand.
The report highlights that India demonstrates steady growth, ranking fourth in improvement over 10 years and third over 20 years in the Asia-Pacific region. This growth in transparency is accompanied by a sharp increase in cross-border investments in the Asia-Pacific region, with India and Vietnam achieving record transaction volumes. Furthermore, India attracted $8.1 billion in cross-border investments, the highest figure in the last two decades.
JLL notes that despite India being at a critical juncture, having made the most progress in the Asia-Pacific region in the last two years and entering the top five countries globally, much still needs to be addressed. According to the report, the growing interest in AI and data centers represents not just an opportunity but the very engine that can attract major international investors. However, this is only possible if India strengthens its rules and systems at the same pace as the new opportunities.
According to JLL, 'land pooling' mechanisms in India, created to consolidate scattered private land parcels, are still in the initial stages. While master plans at the city level are undergoing administrative procedures, they are not being implemented on a large scale.
For plans to be uniformly implemented across the country and translated into measurable results, the application of GIS and aerial photography (drone) based digitalization needs to be expanded beyond pilot cities. Discrepancies also remain in plans concerning regulations and reporting on building operational performance standards, energy consumption disclosure at the property level, and climate risk reporting for sustainability.
From a technological standpoint, the adoption of technology in real estate acquisition and sales processes lags behind more developed markets, and government interaction with PropTech remains uneven. There is a significant disparity in the availability and depth of data in smaller Indian cities, creating gaps that better-resourced markets have already managed to address to a greater extent. The use of new technologies, such as digital registries and software, in real estate transactions is currently limited to major cities and has not reached smaller towns. Although tenants' rights to audit landlord accounts have improved, they still lag significantly behind those in developed countries.
