India property data gaps pose a challenge to building a reliable house price index

Square Yards Research

6 November 2026

Average home prices can shift because the mix of homes sold has changed, even if comparable homes have not become more expensive. Square Yards’ whitepaper, Approaches to Constructing Residential House Price Index, compares six methods and how well they fit India’s data environment.

India’s gaps in persistent property identifiers and property-level valuation data constrain some methods. The whitepaper finds that spatiotemporal modeling performs best when detailed transaction data, location information, and technical expertise are available.

Square Yards and IIM Bangalore are collaborating to develop a data-driven property price index. Square Yards will provide anonymized, aggregated data, while IIMB will lead the methodology.

Key Insights

A house price index aims to separate genuine price movement from changes in the mix of homes sold.
India’s data gaps make some established methods difficult to scale.
Spatiotemporal modeling ranks highest in the report’s assessment but requires more data and implementation effort.
IIMB will independently determine the methodology for the index developed in collaboration with Square Yards.

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