Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine whether internet search intensity, as captured by Google’s search volume index (SVI), predicts house price changes in an emerging market like India. Design/methodology/approach: Using data on Google’s SVI for four Indian cities and their...

We examine whether internet search intensity, as captured by Google’s Search Volume Index (SVI), predicts house price changes in an emerging market like India. Emerging markets have low internet penetration and high information asymmetry with a dominant unorganized real estate market. Like in...

Ideally land and buildings ought to be preferred collateral for lenders in India, as in many other countries, due to the ease of valuation and disposal of land in the event of default. Data shows that land is a collateral in a large proportion of loans in India, yet the several structural,...

A large share of residential properties on sale in developing countries is under construction. This is partly due to lengthy periods of construction. But purchasing under-construction properties can be costly and risky because of construction delays and the possibility of stalled construction....

Real estate markets in emerging economies are beset with price opacity, low transaction volumes and perverse incentives on tax evasion, leading to acute shortage of reliable price information. In this paper, we overcome the paucity of reliable price information in emerging markets through a...

A large share of residential properties on sale in developing countries is under construction. This is partly due to lengthy periods of construction. But purchasing under construction properties can be costly and risky because of construction delays and the possibility of stalled construction....