According to Knight Frank, globally house prices increased at their fastest rate since Q4 2006. Knight Frank’s latest Global House Price Index, a benchmarking average prices across 56 countries and territories, and increased 7.3% in the year to March 2021.
Significantly, Commonwealth countries such as Australia and Canada are on the list of top housing hotspots. It is time for wealthy and affluent classes in the Commonwealth to look for lucrative housing markets, particularly, within the CW itself and in housing hotspots elsewhere to make substantial investments that would guarantee them a good return.
Turkey leads the rankings for annual price growth for the fifth consecutive quarter. However, cutting off the inflation and real prices are rising at around 16% per annum.
Apart from Turkey the top ten is largely comprised of developed nations and that includes New Zealand (22%), the US (13%), Sweden (13%), Austria (12%) and Canada (11%).
With twelve countries recording double-digit price growth in the year to Q1 2021, it is hardly surprising that speculation of post-pandemic housing bubbles is there. However, the authorities are already starting to take action.
Measures to cool down
Authorities across nations have taken measures to curb anticipated market hype and since January 2021, authorities in China, New Zealand, and Ireland have made market interventions with a range of measures from imposing strict lending rules to higher stamp duties for multiple purchases. Canada is also monitoring closely at a national vacancy tax and China is pondering over a national property tax. The market hype is not to be mistaken for a global property boom and Knight Franks warns that there are several large economies with strong prospects for price growth which are elusive and sales in these markets have yet to gain traction; Italy (1.6%), India (-1.6%) and Spain (-1.8%) and all recorded lower price growth in Q1 2021 than a year ago. This was either due to stringent lockdowns and social distance measures, economic and market concerns or excess supply.
