Singapore's luxury home market dislodges weakening Hong Kong in Q3

Posh home prices in Singapore rose 13% whilst Hong Kong’s ground to a halt at 5.5%.

Hong Kong’s posh home market is fast losing luster on the back of punitive cooling measures, effectively giving Singapore room to take the lead in the global luxury property market rankings in Q3, according to real estate consultant Knight Frank. 

Also read: Posh home supply at the Peak to drop by nearly a third

Prime property prices in Singapore booked stellar double-digit growth at 13.1% over the 12-month period leading to Q3 on the back of limited supply and strong showing in the first half of the year. 

On the other hand, annual luxury property price gains in Hong Kong have slowed to 5.5% over the same period, as it flopped to a dismal 14th place in the global rankings, trailing behind European cities like Edinburgh and Madrid and newcomer Auckland. 

Also read: Can the luxury property market pick up in the second half of the year?

“Hong Kong and Singapore, Asia’s two premier cities, have traded places in the last year,” Kate Everett Allen, International Residential Research at Knight Frank said in a report.

However, Hong Kong is not alone in the dismal market performance. The price of luxury property inched up 2.7% on average across 43 world cities, which represents the weakest showing in nearly six years. In the European front, the luxury home markets of London and Dublin remained in negative territory whilst that of Berlin and Paris stabilised.

“The overall narrative of lower growth, which we predicted in 2017, has materialised,” added Allen. “A combination of uncertainty surrounding Brexit, rising interest rates across major economies, a tighter regulatory environment and the remnants of high supply in some markets is impinging on price growth.”

Knight Frank's Prime Global Cities Index tracks the performance of luxury residential prices across key global cities on a quarterly basis using data compiled by our global research network.