Luxury homes in parts of the US are rising in value faster than in much of Asia and Europe but there are exceptions such as standout gains in Indonesia and Ireland.

Luxury homes in key US cities are outpacing their European and Asian counterparts in terms of increasing value, Knight Frank’s Prime Global Cities Index for the second quarter found.

American cities started their strong growth last quarter, but double-digit value increases in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco in the past three months see all the cities now residing in the firm’s top 10 rankings.

North America had the highest annual growth in prices, with 14.5 per cent for the region as a whole in the 12 months to Q2 2014. This far surpassed the global average of 6.2 per cent growth.

On the whole annual price growth was positive in 27 of the 32 cities surveyed - an improvement on the 21 with positive growth in June last year.

Knight Frank also noted that the 6.2 per cent annual increase is “above the long-run average of 4.6 per cent recorded since Lehman’s collapse”, highlighting the growing popularity of property as an asset class amongst the wealthy.

Other strong performers were Jakarta and Dublin. Unable to match their first-quarter growth of 37.7 per cent and 24.6 per cent, the cities still posted high figures of 27.3 per cent and 23.5 per cent in the past three months.

Cities with less prosperous levels of growth included Dubai, whose prime prices fell by almost half from 11.7 per cent last quarter to 6.3 per cent. Knight Frank attributed this to a mortgage gap in the city as well as doubling of transfer fees at the end of 2013. However, the firm expects that a limited new supply of homes in the city will help drive prices for the rest of the year.

Key European and Asian capitals stumbled to the bottom of the rankings, with Zurich, Paris, Hong Kong, Geneva and Singapore all clocking a decrease in prime property prices. Singapore had the biggest drop  of -7.7 per cent in the past year, while Geneva prices fell by -4.3 per cent in the same time frame.

London conversely scraped into the top 10 at number 9, with 2.3 per cent growth in the quarter. Nevertheless, Knight Frank warned that the index’s performance may weaken as stimulus measures are withdrawn in the UK and US,  a potential rise in interest rates looms and cooling measures continue to be enforced across much of Asia.