To recognise the growing demand of real estate and its contribution in the Indian economy, The Bombay Stock Exchange on its 133rd Foundation Day, launched the Realty Index.

The base year is fixed as 2005, with base index value of 1,000. It constitutes 11 scrips representing around 95% market capitalisation of real estate development companies in the BSE-500 index. As on July 10, 2007, the value of index is 7,392, signifying the tremendous appreciation in these stocks in last 2 years.

Recently listed DLF has the maximum weightage in the index of 35.94% followed by Unitech with 31.57% weight and Indiabulls Real Estate. Other index constituents are Parsvnath Developers, Ansal Properties and Infrastructure Limited, Mahindra Gesco, Sobha Developers, Anant Raj Industries, Phoenix Mills, Peninsula Land Ltd and Akruti Nirman.

The total market capitalisation of the Realty Index is just 4.2% of the total market capiatilisation as against the global norm of 15%. But with more players like Omaxe and IVR Prime entering the market, this ratio would surely increase.

The index would also increase achieve greater investment in Indian real estate as international real estate players would now have a benchmark to judge the companies for investment.