Nine European countries are among the top 15 markets flagged as improving in terms of transparency, according to Jones Lang LaSalle and LaSalle Investment Management.
Nine European countries are among the top 15 markets flagged as improving in terms of transparency, according to Jones Lang LaSalle and LaSalle Investment Management.
In the 2010 edition of the Global Commercial Real Estate Transparency Index issued on Wednesday the two companies said that the increase in transparency has slowed globally but the majority of markets still register improvements. Australia is the world’s most transparent real estate market in 2010, pushing Canada into second place.
While one third of markets globally registered no change or a deterioration, there are a number of bright spots, and real estate transparency continues to improve, albeit moderately, in the majority of markets. Of the top 15 improvers, nine are in Europe and six are in Asia Pacific. Turkey tops the league table of transparency improvers, and progress has been made in China, India, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Greece and Hungary.
The report describes Europe as a mixed picture of transparency. The traditional leading pack - Australia, New Zealand, the UK (third position), the US and Canada - have now been caught up by a number of European markets including Sweden, Ireland and France.
Turkey and some Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have shown good progress as their markets have become more internationally traded and their regulatory and legal environments become aligned with core EU economies.
The more advanced CEE countries of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have now caught up with the laggards in Western Europe, such as Italy, which have struggled to improve real estate transparency. However in Russia and Ukraine, transparency improvements have stalled in 2010, a reflection of the severity of the real estate downturn in both markets and a sharp contrast to the strong improvements registered in 2008.