India remained ahead of mainland China in cross-border property investment during the first nine months of 2026, while Savills pointed to yields, rental growth and data-center demand as factors supporting investor interest.
Savills recorded $5.5 billion in cross-border investment in Indian real estate from January through September, against $3.7 billion in mainland China, using MSCI Real Capital Analytics data. The chart compares India with mainland China; it does not establish a ranking across all Asian markets. It also shows India in front in 2025, when the totals were $5.1 billion and $3.8 billion, respectively, so the latest comparison continues that lead.
The country figures use different rules: Savills counts land in India’s total but leaves it out of China’s, and adjusts China’s figure for foreign partners in joint ventures. The comparison adds a cross-border measure to the recent picture of India’s real-estate investment trend.
Colliers separately put institutional investment in India at $5.9 billion for the same nine months, including about $2.4 billion from foreign investors. That tally covers institutional investment, while Savills measures cross-border acquisitions; the sources do not reconcile the totals.
Savills highlighted data centers as a major investment target, while development land ranked as the largest individual property category. Across the four quarters ended September 2026, Indian real-estate transactions that included land reached $14.3 billion, a 13% increase in U.S. dollar terms.
The report cited Grade A office yields of 7.75%-8.0% and annual rent growth of 7%-8%. Savills said the yields were 60-80 basis points above India’s 7.2% 10-year government bond yield; its notes date the office-yield valuation to March 2026 and the bond yield to Oct. 1, 2026. It also cited urbanization: roughly 36% of India’s residents live in cities, which add about 12 million people a year.
Asia-Pacific real-estate investment neared $200 billion in the first nine months of 2026, up 27% year over year, according to Savills. The firm said its third-quarter regional figures were preliminary and could change as late-reported transactions are recorded.
