News roundup: Global housing markets see stronger growth in 2024, plus other updates

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For PropertyGuru’s real estate news roundup, global housing markets continued to grow stronger in the first quarter of 2024. In other news, South Korea will create policies to stabilise the real estate market, as house prices are rising in Seoul. And finally, apartments are driving the recovery of Vietnam’s real estate market in the first two quarters of this year.

Global home price growth accelerates in 2024

Based on new data from Knight Frank reported in The World Property Journal, global housing markets continued to grow stronger in the first quarter of 2024, with annual growth across the 56 markets we cover reaching 3.6 percent. This marks a notable improvement from the 2.2 percent growth seen in Q2 last year when markets were absorbing the impact of the rapid worldwide rise in interest rates since early 2022.

Although prices are rising at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, this is still below the 20-year long-run trend rate of 5.6 percent. Quarterly growth, though more volatile, is running at 1.3 percent. This is an increase from the past two quarters but still marginally below the long-run average of 1.4 percent.

Looking across 56 markets, 82 percent are posting annual price growth in Q1 – the strongest showing since Q4 2022. On a quarterly basis, 67 percent of markets are seeing prices rise – the strongest since Q3 2022.

South Korea vows all-out effort to stabilise rising house prices

South Korea’s finance minister on 18th July vowed to take policy steps to stabilise the real estate market, as house prices are rising in the area of the capital Seoul.

“Volatility is increasing in the real estate market recently, with apartment prices rising more sharply in Seoul and the wider capital area,” Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said during a policy meeting with the land minister. “The government will make an all-out effort to stabilise the real estate market.”

Choi said the government would take policy measures to increase house supplies, speed up the restructuring of real estate project financing, and step up efforts to control the rise in household debt. He further added in CNA that the government will consider “extraordinary” measures if the real estate market is deemed overheated due to speculative demand.

Apartments see best liquidity in Vietnam’s real estate market

Experts said that apartments are also the type that creates the driving force for recovery for the real estate market in the first two quarters of this year, especially in two large urban areas, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

A survey showed that apartment searches move in the same direction as price fluctuations.

If calculated from October last year until now, apartment searches reached their ‘peak’ around March this year and have now increased by 29 percent in Hanoi and 32 percent in HCM City.

VietnamPlus reports that the private house and land segment in the past two quarters also recorded positive changes in searches and transactions.

The Property Report editors wrote this article. For more information, email: [email protected].

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