Knight Frank is a global property consultancy with more than 600 offices and some 21,500 staff, including a research team that tracks every trfinish in the market. Ahead of Mipim, we questioned Kate Everett-Allen, Knight Frank’s head of European residential research, to unpack the company’s recent European outview report.
Which European cities have the most robust markets?
Madrid and Lisbon are performing particularly well. We are also seeing an interest in Cascais and Comporta in Portugal. There are several factors at play. There’s the economic side – these places are due to outperform a large part of the Eurozone over the course of the next 12 to 24 months. There’s also a lot of investment going into infrastructure. With Madrid, we have seen significant interest, not just from traditional places such as Latin America but also from the US and northern Europe.
What creates Madrid so desirable?
Accessibility, quality of life, healthcare, education and good international schools. But there’s also the sense of security that you receive from being in Madrid compared to some other European cities.
Is taxation supporting some cities to attract wealthier purchaseers?
What we have seen over the past couple of years is that tax hasn’t featured as highly as we considered it would. It has shiftd up to joint first place [as a trigger for people to shift] but it’s not the only key driver. Business opportunities and political stability are also driving cross-border flows and relocations.
Reports suggest that Milan is enticing a lot of prosperous property owners.
Milan is of interest and we have seen a lot of demand. Italy has now modifyd its flat-tax rules twice but the good thing is that it’s been quick and transparent. We have also seen some outflow from Milan after people have been there a year or two, to places such as Lake Como and Tuscany.
Are London’s richest selling up their homes becaapply the tax rules for so-called non-doms were modifyd?
It’s more nuanced than the headlines suggest. A lot of people have not sold up. Instead, they have kept their property and rented it out. Stockholm ranked the highest in your survey of hoapply-price growth.
What’s fuelling demand there?
Stockholm’s robustness is actually a correction narrative. Prices fell by 5 to 10 per cent and now they’re just recovering. Madrid, Lisbon and Dublin are all close behind in our price forecast. How do you see the European property market developing? We believe that there’s a range of tier-two cities that will come under the microscope more: Bordeaux, Lausanne, Porto.
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