Suprita Peri
University of Cambridge
Sofie R. Waltl
University of Cambridge
Abstract
India’s Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) compels developers to register and disclose projects, ring-fence buyer payments in escrow, and compensate buyers for delay. Because these provisions raise buyer confidence while also raising developers’ compliance costs, the direction of any price effect is theoretically ambiguous. Exploiting the staggered notification of RERA across Indian states (2016 Q4–2018 Q2), we apply the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) difference-in-differences estimator to a balanced panel of 45 cities in 19 states, observed quarterly from 2013 to 2025 using the National Housing Bank’s RESIDEX index. RERA notification raised year-on-year
house-price growth by approximately 7.5 percentage points relative to the not-yet-treated counterfactual, an effect that is absent pre-notification, builds over five quarters, survives extensive robustness checks, and is concentrated in more urbanised, deeper housing markets. The results favour a demand-side channel and show that consumer-protection regulation in housing markets is not price-neutral.
JEL.: R31, R38, K25, O18
Keywords: House prices; Real estate regulation; Consumer protection; Difference-in-differences; Staggered
treatment timing; India
Dissemination
Presentations: [University of Cambridge, Land Economics Department Research Seminar]
Sofie R Waltl 