Highlights - Marbella Luxury Real Estate Magazine 2019

International
How are Europe’s
PRIME RESIDENTIAL
MARKETS performing?
PIRI 100:
A European view
By Kate Everett-Allen
Each December, I reach out to our network
of global research teams to start collating
the Prime International Residential Index
(PIRI 100) which features in The Wealth
Report. The index is unique in benchmarking
the movement of luxury property prices
across 100 of the world’s global cities, second
home destinations and ski resorts. It’s a labour
of love and one that never fails to reveal new
trends and nuances in relation to the
performance of luxury residential market
worldwide.
The chart below confirms the results for
Europe’s prime residential markets in 2018.
Key European cities have performed strongly
– Edinburgh (10.6%), Berlin (10.5%),
Munich (10%) and Madrid (8.1%) amongst
them. Second home markets in rural and
coastal locations continue to gain traction
(Algarve 6%, Cap Ferrat 4%, Marbella 3%)
whilst some of the region’s key gateway cities
such as London (-4.4%), Dublin (-2.8%) and
Geneva (-2%) saw prime prices drift lower.
Europe’s performance may seem patchy
but we need to look behind the headline
figures to understand the variation in price
performance. The top performing cities
share a number of factors, despite slower
economic growth across the Eurozone, they
are witnessing strong rental demand, limited
supply and, in most cases, a prerequisite to
residential growth has been an upturn in
their local commercial real estate sectors.
For the region’s second home destinations,
the journey back from the 2008 precipice
has been a long one and a number are at
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