Prime property prices in Bangkok rose by 4 percent year-on-year during the 12-months ending June 2015, while nearby Singapore, with a 15.2 percent y-o-y decline, was the worst-performing luxury market of the 35 cities ranked in Knight Frank’s latest Prime Global Cities Index for Q2 2015.
The research looks at the top 5 percent of the property sector in each surveyed city, and Bangkok’s increase ranked it in 15th place. The rate of growth in Bangkok however, according to this research report, does appear to be slowing with a mere 1.1 percent rise over the previous six-month period and a 1 percent rise during the second quarter alone.
Vancouver, Miami and Sydney lead growth in urban house prices for the year ending June 2015.
Knight Frank’s Prime Global Cities Index, which tracks luxury residential price movements across 35 cities worldwide, has been rising for 22 consecutive quarters but the pace of growth has almost halved in the last year with annual growth falling from 5.2 percent to 2.5 percent.
Kate Everett-Allen from the agencies International Residential Research team noted that closer analysis showed that whilst more cities are recording positive annual price growth, the number of exceptionally strong performing markets has declined.
A year ago eight cities recorded double-digit annual price growth (with Jakarta and Dublin exceeding 20 percent per annum), while this quarter saw only four cities fell within this bracket.
Asian cities (with the exception of Singapore and Mainland China) are rising up the rankings with seven of the top ten cities now based in the Asia-Pacific region.
A breakdown by world region shows Australasia on top recording average growth of 10.2 percent over the 12-month period, Europe is bringing up the rear but has broken into positive territory with average growth of 0.8 percent.
The paths of Hong Kong and Singapore have deviated this quarter. Despite Hong Kong’s new cooling measure (a 40 percent deposit is required for properties under HK$ 7 million luxury prices increased by almost 7 percent in the year to June. Singapore, on the other hand, saw prime prices decline by 15 percent over the same period and is home to the index’s weakest performing luxury housing market for the sixth consecutive quarter.
Source: Knight Frank’s Prime Global Cities Index Q2 2015.
