Australia tops Jones Lang LaSalle’s Global Transparency Index worldwide. Of the 15 economies in the Asia Pacific region that are included in the 2010 index, New Zealand also was rated as highly transparent. Four others — Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Japan — were rated as transparent, on a par with mature European markets. In reflecting the wide-ranging level of transparency across the Asia Pacific region, the index goes into considerable detail to identify the differences between first-, second- and third-tier cities in China and India. And although the Asia Pacific region includes the most transparent market, it also contains some of the world’s least transparent markets, such as China’s tertiary cities (ranked 65th) and Vietnam (ranked 76th).

The real estate transparency index has been run by Jones Lang LaSalle biannually since 1999. It quan