Released on: February 20, 2008, 3:12 am

Press Release Author: George Gonigal

Industry: Real Estate

Press Release Summary: Bangalore real estate has registered the maximum increase in
prices from 2001 to 2005, as per NHB Residex.

Press Release Body: Bangalore real estate has registered the maximum increase in
prices from 2001 to 2005, as per NHB Residex.

Residex was done in 5 cities of Bangalore, Bhopal, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. The
price movements were captured from year 2001 through to 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.
Bangalore was 100 in 2001 and 275 in 2005 while Delhi moved from 100 to 201 from
2001-2005, Bhopal- 100-179 and Mumbai 100-178.

Speaking at the Credai\'s NATCON conference, NHB\' Kaul said that there was a need to
do an index for residential property prices. \"Increase in housing finance has been
25 per cent each year. In other sectors of economy we have sophisticated systems of
tracking markets whether it is stock markets, consumer goods. But real estate has
not been formally tracked and price movements have not been captured. There was a
need to develop a system by which real estate markets could be tracked.\"

The need for Housing Property Index (HPI) was due to urbanization, high economic
growth, real estate assets that are a significant component of wealth, increase in
bank lending to real estate sector, need for transparency in the market, overall
development of the real estate market and policy inputs to government for real
estate sector.

Residex will be an authentic indicator of price movements and it also points out
areas which have a high growth potential. The project was initiated at the behest
of GoI to measure residential property market and gathers information about price
movements in residential properties and track reasons behind it- it\'s the official
property index in the country.

Methodology used was the Price Relative Method. The technical advisory group
consisted of CSO, NSO, RBI etc- after discussion all methods and practices, price
relatives were calculated.

Australia, Canada, US bring out their own indices. Each Indian city was divided into
three categories - less than 45 sq m, 45-90 sq m and more than 90 sq m. Sources of
information were real estate agents, developers and Resident Welfare Associations.
Issues were data collection, authenticity of data, need for cross verification, cost
and methodological aspects. The transacted prices were taken and not the registered
value of houses to get the realistic picture.

For more details on Bangalore Properties log on to -
http://www.magicbricks.com/property/city/p/p p!ct

Web Site: http://www.magicbricks.com/property/city/p/p p!ct

Contact Details: george.gonigal@gmail.com