India has climbed five places to 26th rank in a global transparency index, marking the country among the top "five most-improved markets worldwide" and the "number one improver" in Asia Pacific, according to a report released on Friday.
The report, from JLL, cited its Global Real Estate Transparency Index (GRETI), showing that this rise places India firmly within the middle of the "Transparent" tier and reflects steady gains across regulatory, transaction and sustainability measures. This positioning suggests India has moved beyond the earlier stages of transparency improvement into a more consolidated, mid-tier standing among global real estate markets.
Commenting on the ranking, Radha Dhir, Chief Executive Officer, India, JLL, framed the improvement as part of a sustained, multi-year trend rather than a single-year anomaly. "Our steady progress, fourth-best globally over 10 years and third-best over 20 years, positions India to enter the 'Highly Transparent' tier as we advance toward aligning with the world's most transparent markets," she said.
Looking Ahead to Broader Market Coverage
Dhir also outlined what she saw as the next phase of India's transparency journey. "The next chapter is about scale, extending what is working in our gateway markets to every market where global capital wants to invest," she added, suggesting that the improvements seen so far have been concentrated in India's major metropolitan real estate markets, with the next challenge being to extend similar standards to a broader range of cities and regions.
Record Investment Activity Accompanying the Rise
The country's improved transparency has coincided with record-breaking investment activity in the sector. Private equity investment in Indian real estate reached $10.5 billion in 2025, up 17 per cent year-on-year, and continued its momentum into $4.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up 25 per cent, indicating that the transparency improvements have coincided with, and likely contributed to, rising investor confidence in the sector.
Significant Expansion of the REIT Market
India's office REIT market expanded significantly, growing from 104 million square feet in 2024 to 164 million square feet in 2026, with nearly half of the country's Grade A office stock now considered REIT-worthy. This expansion reflects a maturing institutional real estate investment landscape, where a growing share of high-quality commercial property is being structured in formats accessible to a broader base of investors through publicly traded real estate investment trusts.
Regulatory Reform as the Strongest Area of Improvement
The country achieved its strongest gain in the regulatory and legal parameters category, surging from 37th to 19th globally. This improvement was driven by the maturation of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) framework, liberalisation of foreign direct investment rules, and the digitisation of land registries, three reforms that together address some of the longest-standing structural challenges in India's real estate sector, namely regulatory ambiguity, restricted foreign capital access, and opaque or unreliable land records.
A Rapidly Growing Data Centre Sector
The report also highlighted the projected growth of India's data centre capacity, expected to expand from 1.6 GW to 6 GW by 2029, requiring an estimated $110 billion in investment. Global hyperscalers have already committed over $50 billion toward AI-ready facilities in the country, a scale of investment that reflects growing confidence not just in India's traditional real estate segments but in its emerging digital infrastructure sector as well, driven substantially by the broader global boom in AI-related computing demand.
New Benchmarks for Investors
The BSE Realty Index and India REIT Index have become essential benchmarks for investors tracking the sector's performance, while quarterly financial reporting and annual disclosure standards have solidified across REITs and publicly traded flexible space operators, broadening transparency across the sector more generally, the report noted. These standardised reporting mechanisms give investors more reliable, comparable data points for evaluating real estate investments than were previously available in the Indian market.
Strong Standing in Transaction Processes
The country also maintained its strong position in the Transaction Process parameter, ranking 10th globally and 3rd in Asia Pacific, indicating that India's improvements have not been confined to regulatory reform alone but extend to the practical mechanics of how real estate transactions are actually conducted and documented.
More Reliable Financing Data
According to the report, data on commercial real estate financing conditions has become more available and reliable, driven by growing institutional investment, the expansion of the REIT market, and a more stringent regulatory environment overall, factors that together suggest India's real estate transparency gains are being reinforced by structural changes across multiple parts of the sector's ecosystem, rather than resulting from isolated policy interventions alone.
