Asia: House price to income ratio

The house price to income ratio is the ratio of the cost of a typical upscale housing unit of 100 square metres, compared to the countrys GDP per capita. Normally this ratio will be much higher in low income countries than in high income countries.

The formula is: (Price per square metre / GDP per capita)*100. The house price to income ratios published by the Global Property Guide are based on the Global Property Guides own proprietary in-house research, but we use the IMFs GDP per capita figures.

Statistics in Asia. Asia has surprisingly good house price statistics, though the quality varies greatly. The ex-British colonies tend to have good house price statistics Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia all have excellent houses price time series, the best being Hong Kong, where the data is arguably richer than in the UK, since there are official rents statistics. However in the Indian sub-continent, only India has house price statistics, and this only in a new series, not yet available on the web.

Japan publishes no house price statistics. Its ex-colonies do better: Korea has a good house price time-series, and Taiwan also has one.

Indonesia has house price statistics, and so does China (both of questionable quality). In Thailand, the Bank of Thailand publishes a time-series. In the Philippines, Colliers produces residential property data.

No house-price time-series are produced in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos.