NHB Residex, the first housing price index in India, has been launched in order to fill price information gap and streamline the property development process in major cities. Earlier scheduled to include 10 cities, which included Chennai, Bangalore, Greater Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Jaipur and Patna, the project has been started with a pilot study on five major cities. The cities being covered now are Bangalore, Delhi, Bhopal, Kolkata and Mumbai. In course of time, the index will be expanded to cover 63 cities in India.
What will you do if you are living in Mumbai and want to know the real estate cost in Bangalore. Probably you will go to a real estate agent and try to know the price. And you will get different price ranges from different real estate agents. Now with the compilation of NHB Residex, you need not depend on these real estate agents. The housing price index being made available by Nation Housing Board will provide you accurate information on the current market trend in the cities covered by the project. Apart from benefiting the individuals willing to know current market prices of properties available in a city, the index will be useful for various stake holders, such as Government and administration, policy makers, private builders and officials of housing finance industry.
NHB residex can be used to assess the movement in the value of housing stock over a period of time and also to assess the gap found between the actual and reported market prices of real estate in different locations.
State government and local administration can use the indices in formulating policies on various legal issues related to property tax, housing registration , property evaluation etc. Similarly, the NHB residex can be used by housing finance industry to mark out areas where demand for housing finance is more likely to increase. Builders and real estate developers too can use the index for the same purposes.
A glance at the index reveals the increasing trend of property prices in the cities covered under this preliminary stage of the project. While real estate prices in most of the cities have registered a two fold growth, the property prices in Bangalore have grown about three-fold during the period under review. Although, the study is not without shortcomings, it is successful in bringing out the major outlines of the market trend. In future, however, NHB residex will be made more representative of the actual trend, as it is scheduled to be updated every six months with data collection to be done on a monthly basis.