How to read Pakistan property market data: rent indices, valuation tables and private indices

Update, 3 November 2026: the August figures below are not the latest. PBS’s October 2026 review, listed on its site on 2 November, gives house rent up 5.58% urban and 6.69% rural year on year. See our report on the October figures.

As read on 14 October 2026. This is an explainer. It quotes no property prices and makes no price predictions.

Property numbers in Pakistan come from different publishers and measure different things. A rent index, a tax valuation and a portal’s price chart are not interchangeable. This guide sets out what we found and the limits to check before relying on any of them.

What PBS publishes

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) price statistics page lists the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and the Producer Price Index. The page does not describe any of them as a house price index. PBS says the CPI base year is 2015-16 and its weights come from a household survey of about 26,000 households.

The CPI does have a housing group. PBS’s August 2026 review gives that group a weight of 23.63 nationally, 27.03 in urban areas and 18.49 in rural areas. Inside it is “House Rent”, which PBS’s CPI manual describes as actual and imputed rentals, collected quarterly. The review gives House Rent a weight of 19.2558 in the urban index and 8.6110 in the rural one. For August 2026 against August 2025 it shows house rent up 6.12% in urban areas and 7.78% in rural areas, while general CPI rose 11.1% nationally.

Limits: this is rent, not the price of buying a property. The weights reflect 2015-16 spending, and one monthly figure says little about any single city or society. The review also lists construction input items and construction wage rates as CPI items. Check PBS’s item definitions before treating them as a building cost measure.

What FBR’s valuation tables are

Section 68 of the Income Tax Ordinance, as amended up to 30 June 2024, lets the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) determine by notification the fair market value of immovable property in specified areas. Where it has not, the value fixed by the District Officer (Revenue) or a provincial authority for stamp duty is deemed to apply. FBR’s valuation page lists notified rates by city as SROs, such as the Islamabad entries issued under section 68(4).

Limits: these are valuation figures used in tax calculations. They change by new notification and can differ from what buyers and sellers agree. Later Finance Acts may have amended the section.

What SBP adds

SBP’s August 2026 Monetary Policy Report says that within consumer finance in FY26, demand remained strong for auto, housing and personal loans. SBP also publishes housing finance data, but we could not open those pages from our servers on 14 October, so we do not quote any housing finance figure here.

Private indices

Property portals publish their own price indices. The Zameen Index page describes exploring price trends across cities and localities for houses, flats, plots and commercial plots. As we read it, the page showed no reference month, data source, method or update schedule. We quote none of its figures. If an index is built from listings, it reflects asking prices, not what buyers paid. If the publisher does not say, you cannot tell.

PBS also hosts the Population and Housing Census 2023. We did not read its housing tables.

A checklist for any property number

1. What is measured? Asking prices, transaction prices, tax valuations, rents or general inflation.
2. When? Find the reference period and the publication date.
3. Where? City, sector, society, or the whole country.
4. How? Look for the data source, the method and any revisions.
5. Compare like with like. Do not set a rent index against a sale-price chart.

When a figure cannot be traced to a stated method and period, treat it as unverified.