Appetite for high-end housing in one of Seoul’s richest districts, Gangnam, has pushed South Korea’s capital to the top of a benchmark global index for luxury property price growth.
According to real estate firm Knight Frank’s Prime Global Cities Index, Seoul overtook Guangzhou, China in the first quarter, after posting a 24.7% rise from March 2017 to March 2018. Knight Frank’s report (pdf) noted that Gangnam, known as the “Beverly Hills” of Seoul, is “still seeing strong speculative activity,” helping boost luxury-home prices in the city overall. In turn, demand for luxury properties in the district has somewhat quashed South Korean government measures aimed at cooling the housing market. The moves include new taxes for owners of multiple properties and tighter lending restrictions.
On the other end of the scale, London made the bottom 10 in the index, after falling 1.1%. In Russia, Moscow and St. Petersburg also both made the bottom 10. Overall, Stockholm grew the least, marking a 8.4% decline over the last year.