Knight Frank Global House Price Index up 3% in 2015

KNIGHT Frank's Global House Price index rose 3 per cent in 2015. "Concerns over the global economy in 2015 failed to dent buyer confidence; instead the lingering low interest rate environment influenced sentiment," Knight Frank said in a release on Monday.

The index tracks mainstream residential markets in 55 countries across the world. Of these, 43 markets saw prices rise, up from 10 countries in the aftermath of Lehman's collapse in September 2008.

Turkey leads the rankings with prices rising 18 per cent last year.

Ukraine and Greece were the weakest housing markets in 2015, recording price falls of 12 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.

Knight Frank's Singapore research head Alice Tan said: "Singapore remains one of the weakest performers amongst the various cities; however the rate of quarterly price decline of non-landed private homes has moderated in Q4 2015 after nine consecutive quarters of decline. This offers some tentative signs of price stabilisation towards end-2015.

"However, with Singapore's anaemic economic growth and jobs outlook turning south for the past few months, there has been weakening buying sentiment in both the new sale and resale private homes markets especially for mass-market private homes. Prices of Singapore non-landed private homes are likely to trend lower by -0.2 per cent to -0.5 per cent quarterly for Q1 2016."