And the worlds hottest luxury property market is

The world’s hottest luxury property market is Auckland, according to the latest research from Christie’s International Real Estate.

The firm’s annual report reveals that the New Zealand city is the hottest place in the world for prime property right now, with sales of million-dollar-plus properties soaring 63 per cent in the last year, thanks to strong overseas and domestic demand.

Auckland has overtaken last year’s number one market, Toronto, which saw sales surge 48 per cent year-on-year. Canada’s Pacific waterfront city took third place in the year’s rankings with exceptional year-on-year growth in luxury sales.

For the fourth year in a row, London held on to the top position as the world’s most luxurious property market (the top five is rounded off by Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, and Singapore). So why are buyers picking up prime pads in Auckland? And what are the differences between each of these luxury property markets?

We break down the report to map the data around the world, highlighting how differently each market is performing, in terms of secondary and primary properties.

Toggling between primary and secondary sales highlights the variation in interest from different buyers in cities across the globe. Spain’s beachfront paradise Valencia, for example, has experienced strong growth from an uptick in tourism and Golden Visa investors. After several years of softening prices, Sardinia’s waterfront enclave, Costa Smeralda, is also beginning to witness a positive uptick, ranking seventh overall. Both are secondary property markets for wealthy buyers.

Mexico’s third-largest city, Monterrey, has experienced strong recent economic growth, spurred in part by an influx of new automotive plants from overseas companies in 2014-2015 – with primary property sales belonging to employees and company owners relocating to the area for work.

Increasingly, where affluent millennial prime property buyers are to be found, so too are what Scorpio Partnership recently dubbed “millennipreneurs” — those of the millennial generation (born between 1980 and 1995) and active in entrepreneurship. Destinations such as Jackson Hole are seeing an uptick from these buyers.

“Historically reserved for the understated wealth of iconic families like the Rockefellers or global leaders like former World Bank Chair Jim Wolfensohn, our luxury homebuyers are now expanding beyond the historic demographic with a different type of buyer,” Julie Faupel, of Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates in Wyoming’s picturesque town of Jackson Hole, says in Christie’s report.

Across the globe many smaller and mid-size cities are seeing a huge renaissance in luxury real estate sales thanks to demand from affluent executives and entrepreneurs working in local burgeoning tech industry sectors. Much of the growth centers around Multnomah County as Oregon’s “Silicon Forest” tech ecosystem shifts from electronics factories in Washington County to software startups and tech outposts in downtown/.

Alongside Portland and other tech hubs, Dublin is becoming a hotbed for tech investment and is attracting top industry employees from around the world. In December alone, more than 500 high-skill industry jobs were created, from small firms to tech giants including LinkedIn and Limerick IT, creating substantial demand for prime property from affluent buyers.

What has propelled Auckland to the top of the charts? New Zealand’s strong economy has attracted an influx of migration and prime property investment by overseas students, expats, and affluent investors, explains Christie’s.