Knight Frank has been producing its quarterly Global House Price Index for many years now and each year more countries are usually added to the list (the latest edition covers 56 countries) as the transparency of real estate markets around the world improves.

In the latest (Q2) report the index recorded its weakest overall growth for four years, increasing by just 0.1% compared to a year earlier. This is despite the fact that 41 of the 56 property markets did actually record positive growth during the period. The index showed that Hong Kong (20.7%) and Turkey (18.5%) were the best performing property markets, while Ukraine (-12.0%) and Dubai (-12.2%) were the worst.

Kate Everett-Allen, international residential research at Knight Frank, says: "Housing markets in China and the US, two countries which together account for around 33% of global GDP, are following divergent paths. Since the start of 2014 mainstream prices in China have fallen on average by 6.2% while the average price of a residential property in the US is up 7.6% over the same period."

Regarding Europe, she adds: "Europe is no longer the weakest-performing world region, a title it has held for 15 consecutive quarters. On average prices across Europe increased by 2.8% year-on-year with Turkey, Estonia, Luxembourg and Ireland all achieving double-digit annual price growth."