Real estate markets across Asia are cooling, according to a recent study by real-estate firm Knight Frank.
"These huge booms that we saw from 2009 to 2011 are coming off now," said Nicholas Holt, research director at Knight Frank and author of the firm's Asia Pacific Residential Review.
Governments across the continent introduced various policies last year, including limits on bank lending and higher taxes on real-estate transactions, to lower speculation and soaring house prices.
However, these policy changes are reining in prices in several markets in Asia, which until recently bucked global trends with a real-estate sector that was appreciating rapidly.
In Singapore, housing prices dropped 0.2 percent on a quarterly basis. Hong Kong prices rose 1.4 percent in the first quarter, which Holt attributes to the fact that the city has low supplies of housing inventory, forcing prices to rise.
Meanwhile, Malaysian housing prices fell 0.6 percent, and Taiwan's market dropped 1.5 percent.
China's housing market has been one of the most deeply affected. Housing prices in Beijing and Shanghai rose only 0.3 percent in the first quarter when compared with the last quarter of 2011. On an annual basis, house prices in China are down 2.2 percent.
The Indian market is slowing too, with prices down 0.9 percent, though Mr. Holt said that was due more to economic problems than government policy.