S’pore Home Prices Make 2nd Highest Jump Globally

Source : The Business Times, April 8, 2008

Bulgaria, with 33.7% surge, tops world index, beating S’pore’s 31.3% rise

THE average price of private housing in Singapore surged 31.3 per cent between Q4 2006 and Q4 2007 - the second-biggest jump in a world index topped by Bulgaria at 33.7 per cent.

Knight Frank tracks average prices worldwide via its Global House Index, which is based on an assessment of price changes in the mainstream housing markets of countries covered.

According to the index, Russia, Poland and Hong Kong, with respective hikes of 30, 22.4 and 22.3 per cent, ranked third, fourth and fifth.

However, price growth across the markets covered in the index fell year on year in the final quarter of 2007.

Knight Frank said price inflation globally during the year was 8.2 per cent, compared with 9.7 per cent the year before.

Knight Frank’s head of residential research Liam Bailey said that while property prices in Europe and America appear to be, ’suffering from the downturn in economic conditions’, prices in Asia and elsewhere, notably Singapore and Hong Kong, are performing well. Besides Singapore and Hong Kong, other Asian countries where home prices increased last year include China and Indonesia, which ranked 12th and 17th in the index with respective increases of 10.5 and 4.7 per cent. Knight Frank said prices in Singapore rose steadily for all types of property, especially apartments.

It said that in Hong Kong, almost half of the growth in prices happened in the last quarter of 2007 alone.

In China, home prices in 70 cities rose 10.5 per cent in 2007, with Shanghai’s 10.8 per cent growth marginally exceeding the national average.

Figures for December 2007 showed prices in Beijing fell as policies aimed at cooling speculative investment were introduced.

Shenzhen also saw a fall in prices towards the end of the year after credit was tightened in mid-2007.

Of Knight Frank’s list of top-30 countries with price movements, only five countries registered falls - the US, Germany, Latvia, Ireland and Estonia.

Underscoring the volatility of certain markets, Mr Bailey noted: ‘The most outstanding feature in this index in Europe is Bulgaria’s continued strong showing against the astonishing reversal of fortune witnessed in the three Baltic countries.’

Two of the three; Latvia and Estonia, suffered negative growth of -7.1 and -14.5 per cent, while prices in Lithuania grew only one per cent.’

He said that a year earlier, these countries saw respective price increases of 66.6, 23.8 and 23 per cent.