Chennai Circle Rates Report, Q3 2026: Guideline Values from 2017 to 2026

Summary

In Tamil Nadu the circle rate is called the guideline value. The Registration Department fixes it street by street, and stamp duty is charged on it whenever the price in the deed is lower. Chennai’s values have had a turbulent decade. They were cut by 33% in June 2017, restored in April 2023, challenged in the Madras High Court, and then revised again on 1 July 2024.

The July 2024 revision raised the median street 10% on the 2023 schedule, and it is still in force. Every one of the 193 land values we followed through 2024, 2025 and 2026 stayed the same. Against the 2017 schedule, the median street is now 64% higher.

Levels differ hugely across the city. T. Nagar is the dearest of the 36 areas we read, at 317 against the median area, and Navalur (OMR) the lowest, at 21. New flats have had their own composite value since December 2023. Composite values for new flats spread far less from area to area than land values do: about 4.7 times from the lowest area to the highest, against about 15 times for land. This report shows all of this as indices and percentages. It prints no rupee values, which TNREGINET allows others to reproduce only with permission, and it does not forecast anything.

What a guideline value is, and how stamp duty uses it

Tamil Nadu calls its circle rate the guideline value. It is the minimum value the Registration Department accepts for a property when its sale is registered. Chennai’s values are set street by street, inside each guideline village and sub-registrar office, and each street carries a land class such as residential or commercial.

Stamp duty is charged on the higher of two values: the price in the deed, or the property’s value at the guideline value. In Tamil Nadu that is 7% stamp duty plus a 2% registration fee, 9% in all. The fee on sale deeds was cut from 4% to 2% on 1 April 2023. Our stamp duty calculator does the sum.

Since 1 December 2023, the first sale of a flat from the builder is registered on a composite value: one figure per street, per square foot of super built-up area, covering the land share and the building together. Stamp duty on such a sale is 4%, 5% or 7% depending on the flat’s value, plus the 2% fee. Resale flats and land still use the land guideline value. A guideline value is a government valuation, not a market price. For asking prices, see our Chennai property rates page.

From 2017 to 2026: a cut, a reversal, a court case and a revision

Chennai’s guideline values have moved in a few large steps, not every year.

• 9 June 2017. The state cut guideline values by 33% across Tamil Nadu.
• 1 April 2023. A circular cancelled the cut and brought back the values in force before June 2017. On the streets we followed, 179 of 183 rose exactly 49.3%, which is a 33% cut undone. The registration fee on sale deeds fell from 4% to 2% on the same day.
• 1 December 2023. Composite values for the first sale of new flats began.
• 18 December 2023 and 6 March 2024. The Madras High Court quashed the 2023 circular on a petition by builders’ body CREDAI Chennai, and a Division Bench confirmed the ruling, directing the 2017 values until a lawful revision. What sub-registrars charged between March and June 2024 is unclear: the portal kept showing the 2023 schedule.
• 1 July 2024. After a draft in June 2024 and approval by the valuation committee on 29 June, new values took effect. The median street rose 10% on the 2023 schedule.
• 2025 and 2026. No general revision. On 28 October 2026, TNREGINET still showed the schedule from 1 July 2024 as current.

As an index with the June 2017 schedule at 100, the median street went to 149 in April 2023 and 164 in July 2024, and it has stayed there.

The July 2024 revision, street by street and area by area

Of the 184 streets we followed from the 2023 schedule, 151 rose within half a point of 10%. Another 22 rose less, including 2 that did not change, and 11 rose a little more. The full range was 0% to 11%.

Area by area, the median change ran from 8% to 10.8%, and 22 of 33 areas rose exactly 10%. In other words, the July 2024 revision did not reprice one part of Chennai against another. It lifted most streets by the same share.

No general revision in 2025 or 2026

Every one of the 193 land values we followed through 2024, 2025 and 2026 stayed the same. Of the 193 current land rows we read, 188 carry a start date of 1 or 2 July 2024. The other 5 are streets that were added or re-entered later at their own date, such as Navalur streets moved to a new sub-registrar office in July 2025 at the same values.

All 149 composite values for flats that we followed through 2024, 2025 and 2026 stayed the same too. 122 of the 153 composite values we read date from December 2023; the rest belong to streets and projects added since.

A 2025 amendment to the stamp rules, reported in the press, lets the valuation committee revise values at any time. Until a new schedule is published, the July 2024 values stay in force.

Chennai’s areas ranked by guideline value

To compare areas without printing rupee values, we take the median land value of the streets we read in each area and set the median area at 100.

The dearest five are T. Nagar at 317, Mylapore at 254, R.A. Puram / Boat Club at 247, Egmore at 209 and Anna Nagar at 183. The lowest five are Navalur (OMR) at 21, Avadi at 38, Thoraipakkam (OMR) at 51, Pallikaranai at 51 and Medavakkam at 51. Of the 36 areas, 18 sit above the median and 18 below it. The top area’s land is valued about 15 times the bottom area’s.

Two cautions. We read key roads and locality streets, not every street, and main roads often carry a commercial land class that is dearer than the side streets. And an area’s level depends on which streets fall in its guideline village. Use the index to compare areas, not to value a plot.

Composite values for new flats against land

A composite value covers both the land share and the building, so it behaves differently from land. Across the 102 streets that have both a composite value and a land value, the composite value is a median 109 against land (land = 100), with a range of 59 to 212. On 60 streets it is above the land value and on 42 below.

Where land is cheap, more of a new flat’s official value sits in the building: in areas below the median land level the composite value is a median 136 against land, and in areas above it 99. That fits how a composite value is built, since the building counts for more where the land under it is worth less.

Composite values for new flats spread far less from area to area than land values do: about 4.7 times from the lowest area to the highest, against about 15 times for land. Against the median area, composite levels run from 49 in Tambaram to 228 in R.A. Puram / Boat Club.

How to read this report, and where to find the official values

Every figure here is an index, a percentage or a count that we worked out from the official values. We do not print the rupee values: TNREGINET’s copyright policy says its content may not be reproduced without permission, and until permission is granted we publish derived figures only. An index of 150 means half as much again as the comparison point.

To find the guideline value of a street, use the guideline value search on TNREGINET (tnreginet.gov.in), the Registration Department’s portal. Choose the sub-registrar office and the guideline village, then find the street and its land class. Composite values for flats are in the same search. The sub-registrar’s office can confirm the value for a deed.

What is not covered: survey-number values for agricultural or unsurveyed land, every street of the large villages (we read representative key streets), and West Mambalam. One street listed twice with different values is left out. The values sub-registrars charged from March to June 2024 are not settled in the official record. Nothing here is a forecast or advice to buy or sell.

Methodology

Data. Guideline values from the Tamil Nadu Registration Department’s guideline value search (TNREGINET) for selected streets in 36 Chennai areas, in the schedules from 9 June 2017, from 1 April 2023 and from 1 July 2024, and composite values for flats from 1 December 2023, read on 28 October 2026 (dataset version 1.0). For each area we identified the guideline villages and sub-registrar offices and chose its main roads and locality streets by their official names. Older values come from the same village in the older schedules, or from the earlier village where streets were re-mapped.

Definitions. A street line is one street, village, sub-registrar office and land class. An area’s level is the median of its streets’ current land values as an index to the median area (= 100). Composite against land compares the composite value and the land value of the same street in the same year (land = 100).

Calculations. A change is the later value divided by the earlier one, minus one; medians are across streets. A street’s index sets its first schedule to 100. Unchanged means the same value in every year we followed. Nothing is estimated or interpolated.

How we collect, check and publish research data: Property Nivesh research methodology.