Knight Frank today launches the Asia-Pacific Residential Review for June 2015 that tracks the price movement of 11 major markets in Asia-Pacific. Q1 2015 saw house prices increase across six of these markets.
Nicholas Holt, Head of Research for Asia Pacific, says, “Despite facing many headwinds, the IMF is forecasting stronger growth in 2015 for six out of the 11 major countries we track. While this should be a positive sign for home owners or investors, the reality is that in many cases there has been a divergence between short-term economic growth and market performance.
“Perhaps now more than ever, property market observers are looking to policy makers for clues about how markets will perform. Monetary policy, tax, regulations and underlying fundamental drivers such as growth demographics and urbanisation will have a significant impact on markets.”
NOTE: The above groupings are very general to cover the entire region and mask differences between markets. The nature and structure of each country’s market varies significantly, and therefore reflects how influential policy makers can be in relation to housing markets. For example, China is much more policy driven, hence both birth rate (one-child policy) and urbanisation (Hukou household registration system) are heavily influenced by policy makers. This is not the case in most other markets.