Time to snap up Bangkok prime property?

Recent data released from Knight Frank that analyses global property prices, ranks Bangkok twelfth in their Prime Global Cities Index. Despite increasing 5.3 percent over the last year, Bangkok prime property has slowed down with an increase of just 0.1 percent in the last three months and 0.2 percent in the past six months – rates much lower than other cities ranked in the top 20 – making it a good time to consider investing in Bangkok’s prime property.

Vancouver occupies the top ranking but Knight Frank anticipates for property price inflation in the Canadian city to slow in response to a new tax of 15 percent for foreign buyers that was introduced on 2 August 2016. Although in Asia, Singapore ranks the highest with a 7.9 percent increase despite cooling measures to slow down the market. With the inclusion of Toronto and San Francisco, the Prime Global Cities Index has expanded this quarter and now tracks prime residential prices across 37 cities worldwide.

Vancouver has joined an expanding club of cities (including Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, and Melbourne) where policymakers are taking steps to control the flow of foreign capital into their housing markets in order to stem demand and improve affordability for local residents.

The majority of Knight Frank’s top ten ranking cities have been on the receiving end of new cooling measures in the last 12 months. From interest rate hikes to fees for foreign buyers, higher land taxes, or new rules on the number of second homes that can be acquired, lowering price inflation is high up government agendas which suggest that a year from now the cities populating the top ten rankings could look very different.

Weakest performers
Hong Kong has eclipsed Taipei this quarter to take the title of weakest-performing residential market. Prime prices slipped 8 percent in the year to June as supply increased and concerns over the slowdown in the local economy persisted.

In London, prime prices were already softening prior to the European Union referendum in June as the city absorbed the fifth change to stamp duty rates in as many years.
Annual price growth has slowed from 8.3 percent to -0.6 percent over the five year period.

Knight Frank noted that the global economy is still in a precarious state, lacking any real engine of growth. Low oil prices, deflationary concerns in the Eurozone, uncertainty surrounding the impact of the U.K.’s Brexit decision and weaker-than-forecast U.S. GDP figures represent just some of the challenges on the global economic landscape.