The View | India’s property market enters the big league but challenges remain

The woefully low level of investment in India – a leading emerging market that at the time was already the world’s third-largest economy in purchasing power parity terms – spoke volumes about the problems bedevilling the country’s property industry.

As recently as a decade ago, the sector was notoriously opaque, poorly regulated, beset by delays in project delivery and starved of institutional capital. According to Colliers, Indian commercial and residential real estate was only a US$70 billion industry in 2010, accounting for just 5 to 6 per cent of the country’s economic output.

The facts speak for themselves. India’s office market is the fourth-largest in the world. The stock of office space surpassed 1 billion sq ft this year, with grade A buildings accounting for 54 per cent of the stock. In Bengaluru, India’s thriving tech hub, the share is nearly 70 per cent, data from Knight Frank shows.