India real estate — what the reports say

भारत का रियल एस्टेट बाज़ार — रिपोर्ट क्या कहती हैं

Start with the disagreement

पहले असहमति समझें

Search for the size of India's real estate market and you will find confident, specific numbers. They do not agree with each other, and the gap is not small. Published estimates for 2025–26 include:

Two firms put 2025 at roughly USD 600 billion. A joint industry study puts it at roughly USD 290 billion — less than half. Both cannot be right, and neither is lying. They are measuring different things: some count transaction value, some count asset stock, some include construction activity, some include land, some cover only formal-sector developer product. None of them publishes a reconciliation.

Official price data

सरकारी आँकड़े

Two official series exist and are free to consult. They are narrower than the consultancy reports and considerably more reliable.

NHB RESIDEX

India's official residential housing price index, published quarterly by the National Housing Bank. For the quarter October–December 2025 (Q3 FY 2025-26), NHB reported:

• The 50-city composite index based on valuation prices from banks and housing finance companies rose 5.0% year on year, against 7.2% a year earlier.
• 46 of 50 cities registered growth; four declined.
• The range ran from Gurugram at +22.8% to Raipur at −8.9%.
• Sequentially the index rose 1.8%, continuing an increasing quarter-on-quarter trend since September 2021.
• Among the seven major markets: Bengaluru +12.7%, Chennai +8.2%, Ahmedabad +6.8%, Kolkata +6.7%, Mumbai +3.7%, Pune +3.5%, Hyderabad +3.2%.

RBI House Price Index

The Reserve Bank of India publishes a quarterly house price index built from transaction-level data supplied by housing registration authorities in ten cities — including Jaipur, alongside Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow and Mumbai. Preliminary RBI data released in February 2026 showed the all-India index up 3.58% year on year in the quarter ending December 2025, and up 1.24% on the previous quarter.

Note that NHB and RBI report different national growth rates for the same quarter — 5.0% and 3.58%. Different samples, different methods, both official. That is normal and it is worth being able to explain.

Housing lending

आवास ऋण

• Housing loans held by commercial banks reached INR 33.1 trillion by February 2026, having grown a further 9.8% over the first eleven months of 2025-26.
• Growth in FY 2024-25 was 10.7%, against 36.5% in 2023-24 — a sharp deceleration.
• Housing loans stood at about 16.5% of non-food gross bank credit in FY 2024-25, broadly stable against 16.6% the previous year.

Source: Global Property Guide, compiling Reserve Bank of India data, 2026.

Institutional investment

संस्थागत निवेश

Colliers India reported:

• USD 8.5 billion of institutional investment into Indian real estate in calendar 2025 — a record — with the December quarter alone accounting for USD 4.2 billion, the highest single quarter recorded.
• USD 4.5 billion in H1 2026, up 50% year on year and a six-year peak for a first half.
• Q2 2026 inflows of USD 2.9 billion, up 70% year on year, with office assets taking about 37%.
• Domestic capital now leads. Domestic investors deployed USD 2.6 billion in H1 2026, up 80% year on year and about 57% of total inflows. Colliers has noted the domestic share rising from 16% in 2021 to 34% in 2024.

The shift from foreign to domestic capital is the more durable observation here. A market funded by its own institutions behaves differently from one dependent on global allocators.

Office

ऑफ़िस

CBRE reported office leasing of 82.6 million sq ft in 2025 — a record for the third consecutive year, up around 1% year on year — with supply at 58.9 million sq ft. Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR together accounted for roughly 61% of absorption. Global Capability Centres have been a substantial share of demand, with Colliers noting they drove nearly 40% of uptake in the first nine months of 2025.

Residential volumes and prices

आवासीय बिक्री और भाव

ANAROCK, tracking the top seven cities (Delhi-NCR, MMR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata), reported:

• Average price across the seven rose from Rs 7,080 per sq ft at end-2023 to Rs 8,590 at end-2024 (+21%), then to about Rs 9,260 at end-2025 (+8%).
• Delhi-NCR led both years — Rs 5,800 per sq ft in 2023 to Rs 7,550 in 2024 (+30%), then to about Rs 9,300 in 2025 (+23%).
• 2025 new launches of about 4,19,170 units across the seven cities, against 4,12,520 in 2024. Unsold inventory rose about 4% to roughly 5.77 lakh units.
• In Q2 2026, sales fell about 6% year on year while average prices rose about 7%, with Delhi-NCR up 13%.

The pattern worth noticing: prices rising while volumes soften. Level 4, Lesson 4 described exactly this as the diagnostic signature of a turning phase — volume moves before price does.

The sector in the economy

अर्थव्यवस्था में हिस्सा

IBEF, the Government-backed trust, reports real estate as India's second-largest employment generator after agriculture, employing over 5.5 crore people in 2021 and contributing around 7% of GDP. Its published projections include the sector reaching USD 1 trillion by 2030 and USD 5.8 trillion by 2047, at 15.5% of GDP.

What none of this tells you

यह सब क्या नहीं बताता

Every figure on this page concerns urban, formal-sector, largely residential and office real estate in major cities. None of it measures agricultural land in a Rajasthan tehsil. There is no index for what a bigha of बारानी land near Phulera is worth, and no consultancy tracks it.

That gap is worth stating plainly to clients who arrive quoting national growth numbers. The relationship between "India's real estate market is growing at 9% a year" and the price of a specific agricultural parcel is weak, indirect, and mediated by everything in Levels 3 and 4 — zoning, conversion, access, title and local demand. Use this data to understand the environment. Do not use it to price a field.