The report examines 100 luxury real estate markets and provides first-hand insights into the drivers shaping them. The annual Christie’s International Real Estate Index, which compares key data and luxury house price metrics, yielded a new set of global benchmarks for 2015 and provided a closer look at the overall health of the luxury marketplace.
“The combination of high-volume and record-breaking prices were unsustainable at peak levels” said Dan Conn, CEO, Christie’s International Real Estate. “There needed to be a slowdown in these key markets and that is what began to occur in the middle of 2015 and into 2016. This is what we call a ‘return to realism’ year. Beyond that we observed 2015 and 2016 to date as the age of the underdog, with less prominent markets performing extremely well.”
Additional highlights from Luxury Defined include:
• For the fourth year in a row, London commands the top position as the world’s most luxurious property market. The top five is rounded off by Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, and Singapore.
• Auckland, New Zealand supplants Toronto, Canada as the world’s “hottest” (based on increase in number of luxury home sales, absorption in the luxury market and decrease in average days on market) luxury real estate market, part of Luxury Defined’s “Luxury Thermometer” scale. The top five include Auckland, Toronto, Victoria, Valencia and San Francisco, respectively.
• The report outlines enormous differences in the definition of luxury, with homes in Palm Springs, California still defining luxury as $1 million and higher, but areas such as Monaco now defining the start points of luxury at $10 million. Other notable cities re-defining luxury include Los Angeles, New York, and Hong Kong ($5 million); London ($7 million); and Sao Paulo ($1 million).
• Primary housing markets experienced an overall 8% increase in million-dollar-plus home sales as the global housing market returned to more traditional growth rates following several years of year-on-year increases at breakneck speed. Singapore, New York, London, and Hong Kong are experiencing slowdowns in sales, while Toronto, San Francisco, Paris, and Sydney continue to see overall sales growth.
Contrary to other research real estate studies, Luxury Defined not only comprises standard luxury property market measurements – such as top sale prices, volume of luxury home sales, average sale prices, etc. – but also establishes benchmarks by sub-market in order to assess trends among truly comparable homes.
