How are urban house prices performing?

Updated quarterly, Knight Frank's Global Residential Cities Index tracks the movement in mainstream residential prices (in local currency) across 150 cities worldwide using official statistics.

This quarter Budapest (24.2%) has been usurped by the Chinese city of Xi’an (25.1%) as the city with the highest rate of annual growth according to the latest results from the Knight Frank Global Residential Cities Index.

Overall, the index continues to track lower recording average growth of just 3.5% in the year to June 2019, down from a high of 6.7% at the end of 2016. Rising economic uncertainty, trade tensions, political crises and affordability concerns are leading to weaker sentiment in mainstream housing markets.

In Europe, Porto (13.6%), Zagreb (11.4%) and Athens (11.2%) join Budapest in the top ten. Rising from a low base, prices in all three cities still sit below their pre-financial crisis peak. Dutch and Spanish, along with Latin American capitals, also rank highly.

Of note is the widening gap between cities in the same country – this includes Wellington (9.1%) and Auckland (-2.9%), Ottawa (6.3%) and Vancouver (-4.9%), Lyon (9.2%) and Marseille (0.3%) as well as Phoenix (5.8%) and Seattle (-1.3%). Local economic fortunes, opposing market cycles and in some cases, tighter property market regulations are behind this divergence.

Download the index to view the full 150-city rankings

Contact Kate Everett-Allen for more information