Mainstream house price growth rates across the world have experienced a third consecutive quarter of decline, but the USA and Canada have outperformed the rest of the market with positive annual price growth.
All 30 North American cities in Knight Frank’s latest Global Residential Cities Index, which tracks the movement of mainstream house prices across 150 cities worldwide, enjoyed positive annual price growth in the third quarter of 2017.
In terms of the rate of house price growth, 19 of the 30 North American cities registered an increase, meaning only 11 saw their rate of growth decline.
“Toronto has dropped from the top spot to fourth place having seen a decline of over 10% in its year-on-year growth rate, from 29% to 18%,” commented Kate Everett-Allen, partner of International Residential Research at Knight Frank.
The favourable results from the region went against the trend seen in the rest of the index, which saw an overall decline in its annual rate of growth for three consecutive quarters. The third quarter saw house prices grow by 4.7% year-on-year, compared to 5.8% in the previous quarter.
Resilient cities
Meanwhile, Reykjavik in Iceland topped the rankings for the quarter and was the only city that registered annual house price growth above 20%, compared to the nine cities in the previous quarter’s index that grew by more than a fifth.
Amsterdam and Utrecht in the Netherlands were two of the most significant risers through the rankings with the most improved scores, as house prices in the cities grew by 13.8% and 11.5% respectively. While this could be attributed to the falling growth rates of others, the results still show the cities that are seeing the most resilience compared to others.
On another positive note, the number of cities that recorded declining growth rates has fallen from 27 to 26.
At the bottom of the list, Abu Dhabi in the UAE saw house prices fall in Q3 by 9.3%, followed by Valencia in Spain with a 7.7% decline and Darwin in Australia with a 6.3% fall. The results also showed that 46% of all cities that saw house prices fall year-on-year were in Europe, and seven were located in Italy.
