China's luxury home values appreciated the highest worldwide in 2009, helped mostly by its speedy recovery from the financial crisis, a tandem report by Citi Private Bank and Knight Frank LLP reveals.

According to the Wealth Report 2010, luxury home values went up over 40 per cent in Chinese cities of Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai, with Shanghai leading the pack with a 52 per cent increase.

Elsewhere in the world, prices were down, with Dublin and Dubai delivering the most noticeable drops at 25 per cent and 45 per cent, respectively. On the average, key cities saw a 0.4 per cent growth in home prices. Luxury home values were down 7.7 per cent in the US and Canada.

"Boosted by China’s quick recovery from the global recession, the price of prime properties in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong rose at a phenomenal rate last year," said Liam Bailey, the head of residential research for Knight Frank, said.

Property prices in Shanghai, for instance, are now at $500 to $700 per square foot, making it the 13th most expensive luxury-home location among cities, the report noted. Shanghai is China's largest prime residential market after last year translated a sale of 8,438 properties worth a combined $735,000. Despite the large growth numbers, however, Hong Kong remains formidable in the real estate industry, taking up the fourth spot with property values recording at $2000 to $2,500 per square foot.

Knight Frank's findings were complemented by Citi Private Bank's survey on customers real estate appetite. The Citi report showed that 91 per cent of its clients expect their net worth to either increase slightly higher or remain unchanged in 2010. 50 per cent of whom were optimistic about residential real estate as the key driver of this year's returns.