The most transparent markets have registered the strongest gains in the 2024 Index as they set new benchmarks for technology integration, deeper data availability and climate reporting.
The 2024 Index covers a wide range of topics that determine how transparent a real estate market is, from investment performance benchmarks and market data to transaction processes and sustainability metrics. This latest edition includes 151 cities in 89 countries and territories, presenting a uniquely global picture of real estate transparency.
AI is enhancing transparency and creating a competitive edge
The advent of widespread generative AI (GenAI) capabilities has supercharged expectations for technology’s impact on real estate. Investment into AI is growing exponentially, and although many applications are at an exploratory stage it is already boosting transparency across the industry – helping to sift through and summarize huge volumes of legal documents, automating building management, powering interactive urban and architectural design, and enabling unprecedented levels of speed and granularity in valuations and analytics.
However, extracting full value from AI will require considerable effort and investment in creating the right architecture and governance to capture standardized data that can be fed into models, something most companies – and governments – are still lacking. As these capabilities are built out, AI offers the potential for significant advances in productivity and transparency.
Sustainability transparency is at the epicenter for investors and businesses
Sustainability transparency is becoming increasingly critical as the deadline to halve emissions by 2030 in line with the Paris Agreement nears and a growing number of countries and cities set out mandatory long-term decarbonization pathways. With new building energy performance standards, sustainability reporting requirements, and corporate commitments ramping up, sustainability has been the largest driver of transparency improvements in 2024.
Despite the progress made so far, sustainability metrics continue to be among the least transparent globally. Many companies are still at an early stage in tracking their actual portfolio emissions, building-level performance, or climate risk, with a lack of standardized information and processes contributing to concerns about data quality and greenwashing.
Markets with the clearest long-term pathway to more sustainable real estate – such as France, Japan, leading cities in the U.S., and the UK – will offer the most transparent and predictable environments, helping to address the significant shortfall in low-carbon buildings and allowing occupiers to make location and space decisions with confidence, governments to meet decarbonization targets and investors to future-proof their portfolios.
The case of Greece
Greece remains relatively stable, ranking 36th, down from 37th in the 2022 index, with the country's score falling from 2.73 to 2.71 points, according to the 2024 index.
The rating in question ranks Greece among the countries with a moderate degree of transparency (semi-transparent), but the fact remains that our country clearly performs worse than the rest of the European markets, with Bulgaria, Croatia and Malta remaining the only ones EU countries that register lower scores than Greece.
However, JLL does not fail to recognize our country's effort to increase its degree of digitization, which, as noted in the report, results in improved access to land information and urban planning systems.
