The Unassuming Economist

If we aggregate real house prices across countries and look at the big picture, we see that global house prices continue to march slowly upward. This is what we observe in the latest update of the Global House Price Index (Figure 1). The index has continued to edge higher for the past sixteen quarters.

This upward trend in the Global House Price Index is consistent with the pattern we see when we look at real house price growth across countries. Even though the growth rate varies across countries, house prices are rising in many countries (Figure 2).

Moreover, there is also a clear shift in momentum when comparing house prices in 2015 vs. 2009—the peak of the global financial crisis. We can see this by comparing the proportion of countries with either positive or negative real house price growth for both periods (Figure 3). Specifically, the share of countries with positive real house price growth has gone up from 24 percent in 2009 to 75 percent in 2015. And we see the opposite, when we look at the proportion of countries with negative house price growth. Here the share of countries with 3 negative real house price growth has declined from 76 percent in 2009 to 26 percent in 2015. However, it is important to note that global growth has slowed recently, especially in emerging markets. So it will be important to monitor the data in upcoming quarters to determine the impact on the uptrend in global house prices.

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