Monaco Was the World’s Top Luxury Property Market in 2023

Monaco’s prime real estate market remained strong despite global macroeconomic challenges and became the most expensive prime property market in 2023, according to a report Monday from Savills.

The price per square metre in the principality may have grown just 0.9% during 2023, but that increase, however slight, left the average price per square metre at €51,418 (US$55,852).

In comparison, the price per square metre was €39,100 in Hong Kong, €25,300 in New York, €18,900 in London and €8,400 in Dubai.

There were 416 transactions across the principality in 2023, which represented a decline of nearly one-fifth compared to the previous year. However, the total transaction value declined by a smaller amount than the number of transactions, which indicated that fewer but higher value transactions were recorded in 2023.

In examining the total sales by price point, the proportion of apartments selling for more than €5 million increased 2% in 2023, while the share of apartments sold priced below that same threshold fell by an equal amount, according to the report.

Interest in Monaco has risen since the pandemic, contributing to space constraint issues in the principality. Residence card applications also now require a property’s size to match the intended occupying family’s size, which has resulted in greater scrutiny, Savills said.

In response to this rule, many new-build projects are offering larger apartments. The sales of more spacious apartments with three or more bedrooms accounted for over 60% of new-build sales and 22% of the resales across the principality in 2023.

“The number of resales in Monaco has returned to pre-pandemic levels, and this rebound has largely been driven by the increase in sales of larger apartments,” Kelcie Sellers, associate director of world research at Savills, said in the report.

Potential buyers don’t just want to live in Monaco. They are very specific when it comes to choosing a particular district or even development. Together, Monte Carlo and La Rousse comprise over 40% of the total housing area in the principality, yet they accounted for more than 60% of resale transactions in 2023.

In fact, the mean price for resales increased to an all-time high in five out of seven Monaco districts in 2023. Jardin Exotique and La Condamine saw the highest price-per-square-metre growth of 19% and 22%, respectively. Larvotto maintained the top spot for most expensive district by square metre, according to the report.

In an effort to meet the high demand for real estate in this principality, which is smaller than New York’s Central Park, construction projects are in progress. Two large communities are expected to launch this year: Mareterra and Bay House Monaco. These projects will add a combined 166 new apartments and 15 villas to the Monaco market.

Prospective buyers around the world are approaching the current market with caution as they wait to see how macroeconomics, inflation and interest rates play out. However, as Monaco offers somewhat of a safe haven, it may attract buyers who would have purchased property elsewhere, which would continue to drive demand in the coming months, Savills said.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of Australians earning high incomes who are renting their homes instead of owning them, and this may be another element contributing to higher market demand and continually rising rents, according to new research.

The portion of households with an annual income of $140,000 per year (in 2021 dollars), went from 8 percent of the private rental market in 1996 to 24 percent in 2021, according to research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). The AHURI study highlights that longer-term declines in the rate of home ownership in Australia are likely the cause of this trend.

The biggest challenge this creates is the flow-on effect on lower-income households because they may face stronger competition for a limited supply of rental stock, and they also have less capacity to cope with rising rents that look likely to keep going up due to the entrenched undersupply.

The 2024 ANZ CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report notes that weekly rents have been rising strongly since the pandemic and are currently re-accelerating. “Nationally, annual rent growth has lifted from a recent low of 8.1 percent year-on-year in October 2023, to 8.6 percent year-on-year in March 2024,” according to the report. “The re-acceleration was particularly evident in house rents, where annual growth bottomed out at 6.8 percent in the year to September, and rose to 8.4 percent in the year to March 2024.”

Rents are also rising in markets that have experienced recent declines. “In Hobart, rent values saw a downturn of -6 percent between March and October 2023. Since bottoming out in October, rents have now moved 5 percent higher to the end of March, and are just 1 percent off the record highs in March 2023. The Canberra rental market was the only other capital city to see a decline in rents in recent years, where rent values fell -3.8 percent between June 2022 and September 2023. Since then, Canberra rents have risen 3.5 percent, and are 1 percent from the record high.”

The Productivity Commission’s review of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement points out that high-income earners also have more capacity to relocate to cheaper markets when rents rise, which creates more competition for lower-income households competing for homes in those same areas.

ANZ CoreLogic notes that rents in lower-cost markets have risen the most in recent years, so much so that the portion of earnings that lower-income households have to dedicate to rent has reached a record high 54.3 percent. For middle-income households, it’s 32.2 percent and for high-income households, it’s just 22.9 percent. ‘Housing stress’ has long been defined as requiring more than 30 percent of income to put a roof over your head.

While some high-income households may aspire to own their own homes, rising property values have made that a difficult and long process given the years it takes to save a deposit. ANZ CoreLogic data shows it now takes a median 10.1 years in the capital cities and 9.9 years in regional areas to save a 20 percent deposit to buy a property.

It also takes 48.3 percent of income in the cities and 47.1 percent in the regions to cover mortgage repayments at today’s home loan interest rates, which is far greater than the portion of income required to service rents at a median 30.4 percent in cities and 33.3 percent in the regions.

Monaco Was the World’s Top Luxury Property Market in 2023

Buyers paid €51,418 per square metre in the city-state, which only grew in popularity during the pandemic

This may be contributing to continually rising weekly rents