Real global house prices decline, emerging markets hit hardest

Real global house prices declined by 0.6 percent year-on-year in Q4 2025, extending a four-year downward trend.

This aggregate figure masks significant regional divergence.

Advanced economies remained nearly stable with a modest 0.4 percent increase, primarily driven by the euro area (+3.0 percent) and non-euro European economies (+1.2 percent).

However, non-European AEs experienced a fall of 1.1 percent.

In contrast, emerging market economies saw a further decline of 1.4 percent, marking the fourth consecutive year of decrease, mainly due to a sharp fall in Asia (-3.2 percent).

This was partially offset by price increases in Latin America (+2.6 percent), emerging Europe (+4.0 percent), and Africa (+1.4 percent).

Country-level data highlighted North Macedonia (+20 percent), Hungary (+17 percent), and Portugal (+16 percent) with the largest increases, contrasting with China (-6 percent), Canada (-6 percent), and New Zealand (-4 percent) which saw the largest declines.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, real global house prices have increased by almost 3 percent.

Among G20 jurisdictions, Türkiye saw a substantial rise of 109 percent, with Australia and Mexico also up 22 percent each.

In contrast, prices in China fell by 20 percent and in Canada by 7 percent, remaining below pre-pandemic levels.

From a longer-term perspective, global real house prices have risen by almost 20 percent since the end of the Great Financial Crisis.

While most G20 economies are now well above their post-GFC levels, prices in Italy (-24 percent), China (-13 percent), South Africa (-10 percent), Brazil (-9 percent), and Indonesia (-6 percent) are still significantly below their post-GFC peaks, highlighting persistent disparities across global real estate markets.