The top end of the world's major cities' residential markets logged price growth but the pace has slackened to the weakest rate since 2012, a report says.

Global real estate firm Knight Frank reported a 2.6 per cent rise in its Prime Global Cities Index in the year to June 2018, its weakest annual rate of growth since the final quarter of 2012.

The decline in the overall index’s performance is due to the top performing cities’ price rising more slowly, the firm said. 

“The introduction of new, and the strengthening of existing, property market regulations, along with the rising cost of finance and a degree of political uncertainty is resulting in more moderate price growth at the luxury end of the world’s top residential markets," the firm said. 

Last quarter seven cities registered double-digit annual price growth, in Q2 only three – Guangzhou (11.9 per cent), Singapore (11.5 per cent) and Madrid (10.3 per cent) - registered double-digit growth from June 2017 to June 2018.

San Francisco (9.5 per cent) and Tokyo (9.4 per cent) made up the rest of top five risers in the index for the 12 months to June 2018.

Decline
Stockholm was the city with the largest fall in price for Q2 year-on-year with an 8.4 per cent drop. Vancouver came second with -6.2 per cent, and Rome came third with -3.8 per cent. Taipei (-2.7 per cent) and Istanbul (-2.4 per cent) made up the rest of the bottom five.

London’s real estate prices continue to drop – and fell -1.8 per cent during Q2 results year-on-year.

“The gap between the strongest and weakest performing city has shrunk from 33 to 20 percentage points in the last quarter,” said Kate Everett-Allen, partner, international residential research, Knight Frank.