MANILA – Manila emerged as the world’s hottest luxury home market for 2018, a study by property consultancy agency Knight Frank showed.
The Knight Frank Prime International Residential Index (PIRI 100) said the Philippine capital was the top luxury home market in the world, with prices of luxury homes rising by 11 percent from December 2017 to 2018.
The ranking of the 100 cities is based only on how much the prices of luxury homes increased in a year.
Manila trumped cities such as Singapore, Berlin, Tokyo, Paris and San Francisco.
According to Knight Frank, the increase in prices may have been driven by lack of supply and the country’s economic growth.
The economic growth also “motivated some expatriates to grab their own slice of real estate back home,” Knight Frank said.
Despite topping the list, Manila’s performance is still lower than previous top performers.
“In the 12 years we have been compiling PIRI, the top-performing market has yet to record annual growth below 21%. So 11% is quite a departure, but it confirms our view that prime markets are converging and the outliers are disappearing,” Knight Frank said.
Aside from Manila, the only other Asian cities who made it to the top 20 are Singapore and Tokyo.
Singapore placed 7th with 9.1 percent increase in prices, while Tokyo placed 11th with 6.8 percent.
Paris only came in 19th with prices increasing by 5.3 percent, and London came in 91st, with prices down by 4.4 percent.
Knight Frank said the value of the 100 luxury residential markets they tracked increased on average by 1.3 percent. This is the index’s lowest rate of annual growth since 2012.
