The National Housing Bank (NHB) aims to expand its ambit from the current 15 to 60 cities to give exact and relative fluctuation of residential property prices in different localities across the country. The Chairman, S Sridhar said in a recent statement.

He said adding that the bank will cover all cities with a population of over 1 million under the NHB Residex with value of the index derived from the market and not from the government sources and it will now be available on half yearly basis. Meanwhile, the bank is in the process of developing valuation standards for residential properties to ensure some uniformity in valuations.

He lamented that there had been wrong practices in the valuation of property that normally led to malpractices and will plug the holes in the current valuation system leading to frauds by adopting new standards of valuation. Currently work is in progress in this direction and he also called upon government agencies and bankers to use only valuers conforming to the standards issued by the Indian BanksAssociation and expressed confidence that the banking industry would be able to adopt these standards by the end of this year.