Asian cities were among those setting the hottest growth rates for prices of luxury properties, new data showed.

Guangzhou logged a 36.2 per cent increase in luxury residential property prices between March 2016 to March this year, according to a Knight Frank global index of such real estate. Beijing and Shanghai were also in the top-five cities posting rapid growth.

Knight Frank Prime Global Cities Index tracks the movement of luxury residential property prices across 41 cities. The index climbed 4.1 per cent between January 2017 to March 2017.

Beijng (2nd) and Shanghai (4th) had a 22.9 and 19.8 per cent increase, respectively, from Q1 2016 to Q1 2017.  Seoul was placed fifth in the index with luxury property prices rising by 17.6 per cent in the South Korean city, the index showed.

The report found that “prices in the Guangzhou are rising from a lower base than in Shanghai and Beijing, the availability of residential stock is tighter and policymakers in the city were slower to introduce cooling measures which are now widely evident across most tier-one cities”.

Australian cities Sydney and Melbourne scored highly within the index with a 10.7 and 8.6 per cent increase, respectively.

There was a 5.4 per cent increase year-on-year for Hong Kong, but there were some Asian and African cities which saw a decrease in luxury property prices. Taipei (-6.3 per cent), Nairobi (-2.7 per cent), Delhi (-2.6 per cent) and Kuala Lumpur (-1.9 per cent) all saw a dip in the index for Q1 2017 compared to the same period last year.

Cities with a strong focus on technology were among some of the stronger performers from March 2016 to March 2017, with a 7.4 per cent change compared to 3.2 per cent increase for financial hubs. Tech cities consist of Bengaluru, Berlin, Dublin, Melbourne, San Francisco, Seoul, Stockholm, Taipei and Toronto.

“An Asian revival might be overstating it but we are certainly seeing the region’s key cities of Hong Kong (5.3 per cent) and Singapore (4 per cent) rise up the rankings following years of lacklustre prime price growth,” said Kate Everett-Allen, international residential research.