Knight Frank's Global House Price Index has recorded its weakest annual performance since the depths of the recession in 2009.
In the year to March 2012 it recorded only 0.9 percent growth. Prices remained flat in the first three months of 2012, with 0 percent growth recorded on the index. It is the first time since Q4 2009 that annual price growth has slipped below 1 percent.
Knight Frank's report says doubts over the Eurozone's economic future, and Asian governments' efforts to cool their economies, were the biggest factors in the result.
Knight Frank says there are few signs to boost the confidence of European householders. Unemployment is rising due to cuts in public spending, shrinking wages and disposable incomes and, thus, weakening housing demand.
Average house prices in Europe remained flat in the year to March.
House price growth in Asia still exceeds the global average, but has shrunk considerably. In Q1 2010 average annual price growth in Asia exceeded 16 percent, but by Q1 2012 that had declined to 2 percent.
"The Chinese housing market has had a tough 12 months as developers and purchasers alike have had bank finance squeezed as a consequence of the ongoing cooling measures," says Knight Frank director of Asia Pacific research, Nicholas Holt.
"Lending restrictions, new taxes, the curbing of multiple property purchases, and new regulations to restrict the inward flow of hot foreign money have had the desired effect."
Knight Frank says the next 3-6 months will be critical for global housing markets.
If discontent in Spain and Greece can be appeased, and France and Germany agree on a firm path of growth-promotion, the crisis could ease.
However, if will be 2013 - and potentially the latter half of that year - before the index begins to strengthen.
