Chinese luxury homes earned the world's biggest price gains last year while three Chinese cities made it to the top of 100 best home locations globally, based on an international ranking, Bloomberg reported.
Knight Frank's Prime International Residential Index, which tracks the value of luxury homes in 100 locations worldwide, showed that Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou climbed to the top three places with price gains of more than 26 percent last year. Shanghai rose two notches to surpass Vancouver as the city with the biggest annual gain, in terms of prime home values.
China's housing market, especially prime residential property recorded strong price growth in Shanghai (27.4 percent), Beijing (26.7 percent) and Guangzhou (26.6 percent) in 2016, according to Knight Frank's Prime International Residential Index.
Out of the 100 markets analyzed in the Knight Frank's Wealth Report 2017, Chinese cities outpaced other markets but new cooling measures, including higher deposit rates and home purchase restrictions, have already been introduced which slowed the rate of growth.
"The Asian region has taken the lead in terms of growth of wealthy individuals," Nicholas Holt, Knight Frank's head of research for Asia-Pacific, said. "China and India will witness the second- and third-largest number of additions to the ranks of ultra-high net worth individuals over the next decade, behind only the U.S.," Holt added.
Knight Frank also said that the number of Asians with $30 million in net assets is expected to double in the next decade.
The report also showed that Australia and New Zealand was the best-performing region, with luxury home prices rising 11 percent in 2016. Auckland was hailed as the top-performing city in Australasia with 16 percent gain while Sydney and Melbourne registered increases of 9.3 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, the report showed.
Michelle Ciesielski, Knight Frank's director of research in Australia said, "In Sydney and Melbourne over the past 24 months, demand for prime property continues to outweigh the limited supply being brought to market in both the established and new supply markets."