Real estate markets of European countries, the Australian region and the American region are the most transparent real estate markets in the world. Canada’s market now ranks as the world’s most transparent commercial real estate market in the world. Transparency is at its lowest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries.

This is reported in a recently released Global Real Estate Transparency Index from Jones Lang LaSalle, a professional services firm specialising in real estate, and LaSalle Investment Management, its global real estate investment management subsidiary.

In 2008, the biggest improvers in Asia Pacific are India, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and Vietnam over a period of two years since 2006. These have attracted more and more investors and corporate occupiers in recent years. Conversely, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea posted negligible improvements in transparency over the same period in this region.

The Index provides a rigorous framework for comparing the level of real estate transparency in 82 markets around the world. Sixteen countries in the Asia Pacific region have been included in the 2008 Transparency Index.

The survey further shows that nearly half of the countries surveyed in 2006 demonstrated a significant improvement in their transparency score two years later. Transparency levels globally are improving as governments seek to streamline regulatory and legal hurdles to aid cross-border movement of capital and corporate facilities. Only Venezuela posted a lower transparency score this year compared with 2006, principally due to changes in government regulations and new taxation policies targeting foreign investors.

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