The Knight Frank Global House Price Index for the first quarter of 2009 was just released and it shows that Israel and the Czech Republic lead the way over the past 12 months in terms of housing price growth. Israel saw a growth for the 12 months ending Q1, 2009 of 10.9 percent, while the Czech Republic saw growth of 9.9 percent. In the first quarter the best performing market was Jersey, which saw a rise of 5.6 percent in prices, followed by Finland, up 4 percent. Only 15 markets worldwide saw an increase in prices for the previous year.
The largest fall in prices over the previous year of countries that provided full reports was experienced by Dubai, with a drop of 32 percent, and Singapore, with a fall of 23 percent. In the first quarter of 2009, taken alone, the greatest drop in prices was seen by Dubai at 40 percent while Singapore had a fall of 16.2 percent.
Nick Barnes, head of international residential research for Knight Frank, noted that: “On a quarterly basis, 48% of the countries from whom we received Q1 data reported a drop in prices compared to 88% in our Q4 2008 index. On an annualised basis, 48% of countries also showed a fall in values compared to 77% in Q4.”
For year on year growth, Jersey followed the Czech Republic, with Switzerland, India, Indonesia, Austria, Russia, Bulgaria and Belgium rounding out the top ten. For the worst performing markets, Latvia actually came in at 36 percent drop in prices, but it didn’t report first quarter prices. The US was behind Singapore with a fall in prices of 16.9 percent, with the UK, Estonia and Hong Kong next.
