The Global Residential Cities Index tracks the movement in mainstream house prices across 150 cities worldwide. It has registered a decline in its annual rate of growth for three consecutive quarters. Cities across the US and Canada bucked this slowdown trend.
Reykjavik tops the rankings this quarter and is the only city of the 150 tracked where annual house price growth exceeded 20% in the year to September 2017.
Toronto has dropped from the top spot to fourth place having seen a decline of over 10% in its year-on-year growth rate, from 29% to 18%.
Some of the largest risers (through the rankings) include Amsterdam and Utrecht, however, this is largely due to declining growth rates of others, notably Indian and Chinese cities. The overall index increased by 4.7% in the year to September 2017, down from 5.8% last quarter, which continues the trend of declining house price growth globally seen last quarter. Only one city, compared to last quarter’s nine, recorded house price growth above 20% and the number seeing growth above 10% has almost halved from 41 to 22.
North America has bucked the index’s overall trend with all of the thirty cities tracked in Knight Frank’s index registering positive annual price growth in the year to September 2017. Nineteen of the thirty cities registered an increase in their rate of house price growth and only eleven saw their rate of growth decline.
The number of cities registering declining growth rates has fallen from 27 to 26 with Darwin, Valencia and Abu Dhabi taking the bottom spots. This quarter, 46% of all cities registering a fall in prices year on-year are located within Europe, with seven located in Italy.
Analysis over a five-year period shows cities in the Middle East have seen the highest rise in nominal house price growth, averaging 58% (figure 4). Istanbul recorded the highest increase of 129% over the five-year period.
Analysis of real house price growth – when inflation is stripped out – shows Asian cities were the strongest performers over the five-year period. The Chinese city of Shenzhen recording thr highest increase of 116% over this
period in real terms.
Read more here: Knight Frank – Global Residential Cities Index Q3 – 2017