Beijing

London/Mumbai: London may top the global property rates chart, but it’s high-end Indian real estate prices that are growing the fastest in the world.

A new study — ‘Wealth Report 2007’ — by real estate consultancy Knight Frank and Citi Private Bank shows that prime real estate rates in India, along with those in Russia and China, soared 40 to 50 per cent over the last year. The British capital, in comparison, recorded a price growth of 30 per cent in the high-end segment.

With experts concurring that India and China are lucrative markets for real estate, a comparison between the two countries is inevitable, writes Ravi Teja Sharma.

India and China are similar in many ways. Rapid GDP growth, huge urbanisation, growth in middle-class spends, a boom in housing, organised retail malls and a growing choice of products.