The US ranks as the world's most transparent real estate market, followed closely by the UK and Australia, according to Jones Lang LaSalle's Global Real Estate Transparency Index for 2012.
The US ranks as the world's most transparent real estate market, followed closely by the UK and Australia, according to Jones Lang LaSalle's Global Real Estate Transparency Index for 2012.
The biennial index measures transparency in 97 real estate markets worldwide by weighting 83 different factors such as the availability of data on outstanding debt and capital flows. Based on scores ranging from 1.0 to 5.0, countries are assigned one of five transparency levels ranging from highly transparent, transparent and semi-transparent to low transparency and opaque.
The latest survey found that nearly 90% of markets have registered advances in real estate transparency during the past two years, driven by improving market data and performance measurement, combined with better governance of listed vehicles.
Also classified as highly transparent in the 2012 survey are the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, France, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. Turkey once again leads in transparency improvement, along with growth markets Mexico, Indonesia and South Korea. Regionally, Latin America has seen the strongest progress, while UAE-Dubai is classified as having low transparency.
The latest survey found that the gap in transparency between Western Europe and some of the main Central European markets has been virtually eliminated as core CEE markets approach the mainstream. Poland, for example, has transparency levels comparable to Western Europe and is now considered by some investors as a ‘core’ market.
Another key finding is that environmental sustainability has emerged as an important transparency factor with the UK, Australia and France topping the league.
