Affluent Home Buyers Are Driving up Prices in Southern European Cities
By LIZ LUCKING
Wed, Jul 31, 2024 8:35am
2 min
2 min
Lisbon was home to the fastest growing luxury-home prices in the first half of this year, according to a report Monday from Savills.
With gains of 4.2% in the six months through June, the Portuguese capital bested the performance of any of the other 29 prime property markets globally analysed by the property firm.
Cities in southern Europe and the Middle East saw their high-end home sectors perform best, with Lisbon followed by Amsterdam, Madrid and Athens, which all logged capital value increases above 3% over the same time. Dubai rounded out the top five with growth of 2.9%.
In southern Europe in particular, prime prices are being driven by a lack of supply, and American buyers have become a “key prospective buyer base,” Savills said, “thanks to a comparatively strong dollar and a growing interest in the lifestyle on offer.”
In the U.S., meanwhile, persistently high interest rates have impacted demand across the. housing market, and as a result, prime residential prices have fallen in three of the four U.S. cities monitored in the report, with only San Francisco seeing positive growth of 0.7% for the first half of the year.
Los Angeles ranked at the bottom of the list, with luxury prices falling roughly 4%.
Across all 30 cities analysed by Savills, prime residential property prices “remained resilient over the first half of 2024,” recording an average growth of 0.8% and outperforming the 0.6% growth predicted for the year as a whole, the report said.
More than half (60%) of the cities recorded positive capital growth, “reflecting a level of relative confidence in the asset class,” according to Savills.
Looking ahead, “we predict an average capital value growth of 0.5% for the second half of the year, which would bring total 2024 growth to 1.3%,” said Kelcie Sellers, associate director at Savills World Research in the report.
“The ongoing supply-demand mismatch for high-end residential product is projected to fuel price growth in European cities such as Amsterdam, Lisbon and Barcelona, where 2% to 3.9% is forecast in the second half of 2024.”
This article first appeared on Mansion Global
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The imposing stone structures, with towers, turrets and a hot tub room, lord over the landscape near the mountain resort town of Sandpoint.
By Liz Lucking
Mon, Jul 13, 2026 2 min
2 min
Idaho is not a place that’s often associated with Medieval castles, but a pair have just hit the market for $6.25 million.
The imposing stone structures have towers, turrets, ramparts, arrow-slit windows and even a drawbridge, and might just be the most authentic-looking castles this side of the Atlantic.
“Who expects to see a castle like this in Idaho?” said listing agent Brenda Burk of Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty, who brought the property to the market last week. They are, she said, “extremely unusual.”
Schweitzer Castle and Château de Melusine, as they’re known, stand within Schweitzer Mountain Resort in the Selkirk Mountains and overlook the nearby mountain resort town of Sandpoint. They take in panoramic views of Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho’s largest lake.
The pair of ski-in/ski-out homes each have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and three stories, Burk explained. They are “so authentic,” she said. “Every single stone was handlaid.”
Schweitzer Castle, she said, wasn’t built for “functionality,” but has been modernized and adapted and now has everything a 21st-century residence requires, along with a dungeon, which for some buyers may also be a requisite.
The chateau, meanwhile, has a hot tub room with mountain views, as well as a garage.
The property is being sold furnished, and will come complete with the hand-carved statues, armor, mounted swords, stained-glass windows and a host of antiques dating to the 15th and 16th centuries.
The owner, an antique collector who couldn’t be reached for comment, “is always looking for that hidden jewel and he found that here,” Burk said.
The next custodian is likely to stem from a varied pool of buyers, Burk said, that would include “the trophy-home buyer, someone who can say ‘I own a castle.’”
The property could also appeal to someone looking for a vacation home, or a multi-generational estate, and beyond that “there’s the dreamers,” she said. “We definitely try to market to people who like Medieval history or maybe do Renaissance fairs.”
The seller “really wants it to go to someone with the same passion.”
