The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) published the House Price Index (HPI) data last week. Home prices during the June quarter rose by 3.45% from a year earlier, according to the index.
HPI tracks housing prices across 10 cities in India and, like all averages, it hides more than it reveals. Nonetheless, it is an important metric to make sense of things at a macro level.
Home prices in India have remained subdued during covid. The absolute returns from December-end 2019, before the covid pandemic, to June 2022 were 6.5% or around 2.55% per year, according to HPI.
This is unlike what has been happening in many parts of the world, where home prices since the beginning of 2020 have gone through the roof.