“Real estate prices in the heart of New Delhi, especially for the bungalows built nearly a century ago during the British Raj, are among the highest in the world. The obvious question about the prices, in a country where hundreds of millions of people still live on less than $2 a day, is: Why? To a large degree, India is experiencing the sort of real estate boom common to big, emerging economies. When Japan’s economy was soaring in the 1980s, prices in Tokyo were so frothy that the 845-acre compound of the Imperial Palace was valued at more than all the real estate in California. More recently, China has seen a boom, with values rising in some cities by 500 percent.”
