Ireland and turkey lead global house price growth

Photo credit: Victor Radziun

Property prices in Ireland are the fastest growing in the world, according to new figures from Knight Frank.

The agency's latest House Price Index shows that Irish property values jumped 16.3 per cent in final quarter of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. The country was closely followed by Turkey, where property prices increased 16.2 per cent year-on-year.

Ireland's property market, though, still has some way to go to recover fully: average prices remain 38 per cent below their peak.

Kazakhstan recorded the third highest annual property growth (14 per cent), with the top five completed by Hong Kong (11.7 per cent) and Lithuania (10.7 per cent).

The final quarter of 2014 saw a turbulent political and economic landscape emerge, notes Knight Frank, with global economic growth underperforming at 3.3 per cent (compared to the expected 3.8 per cent), oil prices falling, Eurozone uncertainty returning and the Ukraine crisis worsening.

As a result, growth shifted in the last few months of the year, with Hong Kong emerging as the best performing market, as property values climbed 4.9 per cent. Global house prices, meanwhile, fell on a quarterly basis for the first time in over two years: the index rose 1.8 per cent in 2014 overall but slipped 0.6 per cent in the three months to December, its weakest performance since Q3 2012.

Ukraine was the only county to record a double-digit price fall over the 12-month period, as values fell 17 per cent. Spain, on the other hand, saw its price growth move from negative (down 0.3 per cent during 2014) to positive (up 0.3 per cent in Q4). Europe remained the worst-performing region, with prices rising by an average of 1.6 per cent across the whole year.

"The latest data underlines not only the fragility of the global economic recovery but the extent to which it is filtering through to buyer sentiment," says Knight Frank.