Knight Frank just published the 2024 edition of its annual wealth report and, it turns out, that 2023 was a reasonably good year for rich people. Below are some of the charts that I found interesting as I flipped through the report.

The first is their Prime International Residential Index, which tracks the pricing of the most desirable and expensive properties in the following 100 locations. Generally, they define this as the top 5% of each market.

Moving on, this is how much square meterage that US$1 million will buy you in select city and second-home locations.

These are the cities that saw the greatest cross-border investment flows into commercial real estate.

This is their prime property price forecast for 2024.

This is what it looks like for prime rents.

And finally, this is how much net wealth you need in order to join "the 1% club" in select countries/territories.

To download a full copy of Knight Frank's 2024 Wealth Report, click here.

Knight Frank just released the 16th edition of its Wealth Report along with the disclaimer that, with everything going on in Ukraine right now, this outlook is of "little relative importance" and kind of doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. In any event, it includes the latest edition of their Prime International Residential Index (PIRI 100), which looks at the annual % change in luxury residential prices around the world. The chart is interactive, but I screenshotted (above) the top risers and fallers. Toronto is 4th in the Americas and 7th globally with a 20.3% year-over-year increase. Miami is also no surprise and came in 4th globally. The top three cities were Dubai, Moscow, and San Diego. Thankfully though, the number two city is in serious jeopardy right now and I suspect that its position will look quite different next year. Money will go where it feels safe and secure.

Every year for the last decade, Knight Frank has published something called The Wealth Report. I’ve written about it before, but it’s basically a look at “prime property” and global wealth.

As part of the report, they have something called the PIRI 100. It’s their “Prime International Residential Index”, which looks at luxury residential property prices around the world. They generally define “prime property” as being the top 5% of each market according to value.

This year, the top 25 locations in their PIRI 100 are as follows (for the most part, the data is up to December 2015):

Here in Canada, we like to talk about the insanity of the Vancouver and Toronto real estate markets. This list helps to put that into perspective. Even by global standards, Vancouver is at the top of the pack by quite a significant margin. 

It’s worth noting that since this is a “prime property” index, it’s pretty safe to assume that the buyer profiles for these sorts of properties would have a significant international bias. So in a way, this list is really about global capital flows.

Here are the bottom 10 locations on this year’s list:

If you’d like to see the full list, click here.