Weak economic growth, stringent property cooling measures and the strong US dollar continue to hamper property markets in Asia, said a Knight Frank report.
Singapore saw house prices fall by 2.4 percent year-on-year in Q2 2016, effectively placing it among the worst performers, along with Hong Kong and Taiwan, revealed Knight Frank’s Global House Price Index.
This comes as weak economic growth, stringent property cooling measures and the strong US dollar continue to hamper home sales in these Asian markets, said Knight Frank.
Turkey leads the rankings with an annual house price growth of 13.9 percent, followed by New Zealand (11.2 percent).
Canada took the third spot while Chile and Sweden settled in fourth and fifth places respectively. Rounding up the top ten positions are Malta, Austria, Iceland, Mexico and Germany.
Knight Frank’s overall aggregate index has consistently recorded an annual growth of four percent, or thereabouts, for the past two years.
A closer inspection of the index, however, revealed that the extremes are moderating as the percentage points separating the strongest and weakest performing housing markets narrowed from 33 points in the third quarter of 2015 to 23 last quarter, said Knight Frank.
“Of our top five performing countries, Turkey and Sweden are the only two markets where price growth has slowed compared with last quarter, down from 19 percent to 14 percent and from 13 percent to nine percent respectively.”
Knight Frank revealed that the index tracked nominal price growth, but if real price growth is considered, where inflation is stripped out, New Zealand tops the list with 11 percent annual growth, while Turkey – with inflation in excess of seven percent – is pushed down to 13th position.
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
