Property rights, who have legal claims to land, are often seen as formalities of title and lien checks in the US real estate market. But in the global south, where access to records and the histories of land ownership can be far more complicated and informal, insecure property rights can lead to costly litigation. Often potential home-buyers lack information about previous or ongoing litigation surrounding the purchase of a piece of property, allowing such properties to be sold at higher prices. In India, how would mandatory disclosures to the public about litigation details impact the prices of these housing “lemons?”
A paper by University of Manchester’s Vaidehi Tandel, Sahil Gandhi, Anupam Nanda and The Centre for Social and Economic Progress’s Nandini Agnihotri explores in the context of multiple tiers and types of housing in India and suggests how disclosure laws can reduce housing market inefficiencies.
Read their full paper, “Do mandatory disclosures squeeze the lemons? The case of housing markets in India,” which was presented at the inaugural MIT Asia Real Estate Initiative Symposium in the summer of 2023.
