By AI-Powered PMC Akbar Jiwani | Special Correspondent – Real Estate, RealNewsofIndia.com
India’s office real estate market has crossed a new institutional milestone, with the operational portfolio of listed office Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) surging 74 per cent year-on-year to touch 167 million square feet in the first half of 2026, up from 95.8 million square feet in the same period last year. The figures, published this week in a joint report by ASSOCHAM and Knight Frank India, show that REIT-held office space now accounts for 16 per cent of the country’s total office stock of 1.05 billion square feet — a sharp jump that underlines how quickly institutional capital is consolidating its hold on India’s commercial property landscape.
An additional 36 million square feet of office space currently under construction is earmarked for REIT platforms, indicating that the pace of institutionalisation is set to continue well into 2027 as developers increasingly package Grade-A office assets for listing rather than holding them on private balance sheets.
Bengaluru continues to lead the REIT wave by a wide margin, with 67.6 million square feet of REIT-backed office stock making up 27 per cent of the city’s total office inventory — comfortably the highest penetration of any Indian market. Hyderabad follows with 26.2 million square feet, or 20 per cent of its office stock, while Mumbai rounds out the top three with 24.6 million square feet, representing 14 per cent of the city’s inventory. The concentration in these three markets reflects sustained demand from global capability centres (GCCs) and technology occupiers, who have anchored much of the leasing activity behind REIT-grade buildings.
The institutionalisation story is no longer confined to office space. Retail REITs, led by Nexus (10.7 million square feet) and Brookfield (0.4 million square feet), now hold a combined 11 million square feet of operational mall and retail space. Notably, nearly 45 per cent of this retail REIT footprint sits outside India’s eight major metro office markets, spread across cities such as Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Amritsar, Udaipur, Mangaluru, Mysuru, Indore and Ludhiana — a sign that institutional ownership is beginning to reach deep into India’s tier-II consumption centres, not just its traditional commercial hubs.
A third and comparatively newer vehicle, the Warehousing Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT), has also gained scale, with its portfolio reaching 44.2 million square feet as of June 2026, reinforcing warehousing and logistics as the next frontier for India’s institutional real estate ecosystem.
Commenting on the findings, Shishir Baijal, International Partner, Chairman and Managing Director of Knight Frank India, said the expansion of retail REITs was “widening the geographic footprint of institutional real estate ownership beyond the established office markets,” pointing to a structural broadening of India’s REIT story beyond the usual metro-centric narrative.
On the regulatory front, Parneet S. Sachde, Chairman of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority, offered a broader reflection on where India’s real estate governance framework must head next, noting that “the first decade created a statutory architecture of trust. The second decade must create a technological architecture of trust” — a remark widely read as a call for greater digitisation and transparency in property regulation as the sector matures.
Taken together, the numbers point to a real estate market that is steadily shifting from fragmented private ownership toward listed, professionally managed platforms — a trend that analysts say improves transparency for investors, deepens capital markets, and gives retail investors direct exposure to India’s commercial property growth story. With 36 million square feet of fresh office supply in the REIT pipeline and warehousing InvITs gaining traction, India’s institutional real estate footprint appears poised for further expansion through the rest of 2026.
