Foreign Property News | Posted by Hnin Ei Khin
Singapore has the strongest annual growth in luxury home prices, according to the latest quarterly Knight Frank Prime Global Cities Index issued today.
Prime prices in Singapore rose 13 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, the highest among 43 cities surveyed in the index measuring the performance of the top five percent of each city's housing market.
Limited supply of prime properties and a strong market outlook in the first half of 2018 drove growth of prime prices in the city-state, analysts noted.
Singapore took the spot from last year’s chart-topper Hong Kong, which tumbled to 14th place with a growth of 5.5 percent. The former is not "far behind," however, with price growth weakening to 1.7 percent between the second and third quarters, analysts noted. Both cities introduced cooling measures over the summer months.
The index only increased 2.7 percent in the year to September, marking its weakest annual performance since the fourth quarter of 2012.
“2018 marks a watershed for the index.” said Kate Everett-Allen, partner for international residential research at Knight Frank.
Overall, Asia-Pacific has seen 13 out of 17 prime residential markets seeing growth decelerate on the quarter. “Rising interest rates, cooling measures and worsening prospects for global growth are all contributing factors to this region’s prime market slowdown,” explained Nicholas Holt, Asia-Pacific head of research at Knight Frank.
Knight Frank Global Residential Cities Index, Q3 2018, top 10:
1. Singapore
2. Edinburgh Europe
3. Madrid
4. San Francisco
5. Tokyo
6. Auckland
7. Toronto
8. Moscow
9. Cape Town
10. Guangzhou
Ref: Property Report
