Growth in global prime residential prices is slowly improving, with Tokyo paving the way in the final quarter of 2024, according to the latest Knight Frank Prime Global Cities Index (PGCI).
“Tokyo’s market rebounded dramatically in Q4, achieving 10.6% quarterly growth after the previous quarter’s decline. Despite Japan raising interest rates to their highest level in 17 years—bucking the trend of other developed economies—the weakened yen continues to attract foreign buyers to the luxury market.”
The annual rate of growth moved higher in the final quarter of 2024, the report said. “While an improvement on last quarter, the current 3.2% annual growth rate sits below the 20-year longrun average of 5.3% growth.”
Knight Frank’s PGCI is a valuation-based index, tracking the movement of prime residential prices in local currencies on a quarterly basis across 44 key cities worldwide using data from its global research network.
Asian Markets Lead Performance
PGCI said that Seoul emerged as the standout performer of 2024, with an annual price growth of 18.4%—a significant improvement from Q3’s 4.6%. “The city’s luxury market demonstrated remarkable resilience despite political uncertainty.” Manila, meanwhile, maintained its strong annual growth but experienced a cooling in the final three months of 2024 as prices dropped 7.6% on the previous quarter.
“The path to lower interest rates has become more complex over recent months as developed economic inflation refuses to fall as policy makers would like. However with most commentators expecting further cuts in 2025, this will be the factor that will unlock higher house price growth this year.” Liam Bailey, Knight Frank’s global head of research.
The report said the world’s luxury housing markets ticked up in the final quarter of 2024, posting average annual price growth of 3.2%. This marks the strongest performance since Q1 2024, when the index recorded 4.1% annual growth across our basket of 44 global cities.
Knight Frank Prime Global Cities Index Q4 2024
| Rank & City | 12-month % change | 3-month % change |
| 1 Seoul | 18.4% | 2.3% |
| 2 Manila | 17.9% | -7.6% |
| 3 Dubai | 16.9% | 0.5% |
| 4 Tokyo | 12.7% | 10.6% |
| 5 Nairobi | 8.3% | 1.6% |
| 6 Delhi | 6.7% | 0.3% |
| 7 Mumbai | 6.1% | 0.0% |
| 8 Madrid | 5.5% | 1.7% |
| 9 Perth | 5.3% | 1.8% |
| 10 Lisbon | 5.3% | 0.1% |
| 11 Singapore | 5.0% | 2.4% |
| 12 Brisbane | 4.1% | 3.1% |
| 13 Bengaluru | 4.1% | 0.0% |
| 14 Zurich | 4.0% | 0.8% |
| 15 Dublin | 3.9% | 0.0% |
