World's most expensive cities to live 2021

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by biguc

Yeah, it's the exchange rate.

It makes no sense because if you live in a country and earn their currency the exchange rate with USD usually doesn't matter. A stronger exchange rate could even make things more affordable.

But this is from the Economist Intelligence Unit. All of their rankings are intended for corporate Anglos working abroad, probably earning USD. It's basically negotiating information that lets these types know how much more they should earn. Go to a crappy city on their city quality ranking? Go to an expensive city on their affordability ranking? Demand more money.

These lists really shouldn't be consumed like they are. They look like absolute nonsense if you take them as any kind of absolutes at all. That's how you get results that are patently wrong for the majority of people who live in these places, like Paris being more expensive than NY.

Anecdotally speaking, I know someone who moved from DC to London and thinks London is incredibly cheap. Coming from continental Europe, I find every visit to London is an exercise in wiping my ass with all of my money.

Yeah. I haven't been to Europe in the past two years because of COVID, so I don't have a sense of the exchange rate now... But I remember how traveling to Europe went from being "expensive" in the late 00s/early 10s, to being "inexpensive" around about 2014, due to the appreciation of the dollar against the EUR & GBP. It is very noticeable if you travel back and forth a lot, but a local wouldn't really notice the fluctuations unless there was broader inflation/deflation.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by homebucket

According to the article it used a cost of living index but doesn’t define the methodology. I’m guessing it’s taking median income into account somewhere. SF isn’t that expensive relative to median income.

Yeah According to Deutsche Bank 2019

The 10 highest paying cities

San Francisco, U.S.
Monthly salary: $6,526

Zurich, Switzerland
Monthly salary: $5,896

New York, U.S.
Monthly salary: $4,612

Boston, U.S.
Monthly salary: $4,288

Chicago, U.S.
Monthly salary: $4,062

Sydney, Australia
Monthly salary: $3,599

Oslo, Norway
Monthly salary: $3,246

Copenhagen, Denmark
Monthly salary: $3,190

Melbourne, Australia
Monthly salary: $3,181

London, U.K.
Monthly salary: $2,956

[fleonzo]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Full list:
1. Tel Aviv, Israel
2. (tie) Paris, France
2. (tie) Singapore
4. Zurich, Switzerland
5. Hong Kong
6. New York City, New York
7. Geneva, Switzerland
8. Copenhagen, Denmark
9. Los Angeles, California
10. Osaka, Japan
11. Oslo, Norway
12. Seoul, South Korea
13. Tokyo, Japan
14. (tie) Vienna, Austria
14. (tie) Sydney, Australia
16. Melbourne, Australia
17. (tie) Helsinki, Finland
17. (tie) London, UK
19. (tie) Dublin, Ireland
19. (tie) Frankfurt, Germany
19. (tie) Shanghai, China

As someone living in #6.....this is quite depressing. I've would've thought that the pandemic would have brought prices down some more but those "deals" seem to be long gone.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by fleonzo

As someone living in #6.....this is quite depressing. I've would've thought that the pandemic would have brought prices down some more but those "deals" seem to be long gone.

SF rents went down for awhile too, but now they're going back up.

[Manitopiaaa]

San Francisco and Vancouver are missing, but New York is #6?

Manhattan/Brooklyn are obscenely priced, but New York's suburbs - which is the majority of the metro - are quite cheap for having good transit access to the world's greatest city. I think New York is probably underpriced for what it offers.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

San Francisco and Vancouver are missing, but New York is #6?

Manhattan/Brooklyn are obscenely priced, but New York's suburbs - which is the majority of the metro - are quite cheap for having good transit access to the world's greatest city. I think New York is probably underpriced for what it offers.

There's access to Tokyo from the NY suburbs??

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

There's access to Tokyo from the NY suburbs??

well, United does fly non-stop to both Narita and Haneda from Newark, so............ yes.

[mousquet]

I wish Paris was more affordable... Or let me say it in a plain way, simply both cheaper and more efficient.
The price of housing is not only prohibitive, it's a scam over here. Some people have to go indebted for 20 years to get their own property, while this is the kind of elementary schools that the French state has to offer to their little kids in certain impoverished neighborhood:

• Video Link

This young woman has tried to be a teacher for a year, then she quit. I saw that 2019 video just yesterday and I'm shocked.
Her testimony is appalling, a disaster. I won't translate it cause it's too much of a shame.

In Seine-Saint-Denis (Paris northern suburbs), people have to pay for their entire lives just to have their kids uneducated.
That's a scandal. A fucking shame.

Of course, things are quite different in more affluent and more comfortable
neighborhoods, but that's precisely what is shocking to us over here.
We want all kids to get equal opportunities at school. No matter where they come from or what their parents are.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

Yeah According to Deutsche Bank 2019

The 10 highest paying cities

San Francisco, U.S.
Monthly salary: $6,526

Zurich, Switzerland
Monthly salary: $5,896

New York, U.S.
Monthly salary: $4,612

Boston, U.S.
Monthly salary: $4,288

Chicago, U.S.
Monthly salary: $4,062

Sydney, Australia
Monthly salary: $3,599

Oslo, Norway
Monthly salary: $3,246

Copenhagen, Denmark
Monthly salary: $3,190

Melbourne, Australia
Monthly salary: $3,181

London, U.K.
Monthly salary: $2,956

Is that net or gross? Because if its gross that not a lot of money, esp considering housing in the millions of many of these metros.

London less than 3K a month? It doesn't make any sense.

[10023]

Originally Posted by bnk

Is that net or gross? Because if its gross that not a lot of money, esp considering housing in the millions of many of these metros.

London less than 3K a month? It doesn't make any sense.

Real estate prices in London have nothing whatsoever to do with incomes in London. This has been identified as something of a problem by many people for many years. I suspect the same is true of many leading global cities.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by 10023

Real estate prices in London have nothing whatsoever to do with incomes in London. This has been identified as something of a problem by many people for many years. I suspect the same is true of many leading global cities.

Quite right. And some people draw a straight line between real estate prices and overall affordability. As clearly indicated, the study compared compared over 400 individual prices across 200 products and services in all of these cities. I'm not surprised no Canadian cities made this list. Typically, Canada has reasonable prices for food, transportation, energy, services, and consumer goods. Relative to the alot of the cities in this Top 20, some of these things are quite cheap. Granted, real estate prices are a big component.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Quite right. And some people draw a straight line between real estate prices and overall affordability. As clearly indicated, the study compared compared over 400 individual prices across 200 products and services in all of these cities. I'm not surprised no Canadian cities made this list. Typically, Canada has reasonable prices for food, transportation, energy, services, and consumer goods. Relative to the alot of the cities in this Top 20, some of these things are quite cheap. Granted, real estate prices are a big component.

No Canadian city made this list not because we have a low cost of living, but because the Canadian dollar is lower valued against the US dollar.

So for someone visiting from the US who earns a salary paid USD, Canada is cheap! Unfortunately for Canadians, most us make Canadian wages and are paid in CAD. By most metrics for locals, Canada has a higher cost of living than the US.

[biguc]

When I'm back in Canada I sometimes get people who tell me I must be loving life spending Euros. Honestly, even with the exchange rate my CAD go further in Europe than the other way around.

[hipster duck]

Canada is not a cheap country, but I find that other than the usual elephants in the room: housing (if you insist on buying, rather than renting) and higher education, I don't think the cost of everything else makes much of a material difference in the lives of Canadians.

Like, maybe you have to spend CAD10 for a sweatshop-made t-shirt at Joe Fresh rather than EUR3 for the same sweatshop shirt at Primark, or maybe our subsidized dairy costs a little more than the EU's ludicrously-subsidized dairy, but nothing that makes a dent on the spending power on all but the poorest fifth of society.

[JManc]

Canada is crazy expensive; the major cities rival many of our expensive cities. Vancouver and Toronto housing costs are unreal.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Canada is not a cheap country, but I find that other than the usual elephants in the room: housing (if you insist on buying, rather than renting) and higher education, I don't think the cost of everything else makes much of a material difference in the lives of Canadians.

Like, maybe you have to spend CAD10 for a sweatshop-made t-shirt at Joe Fresh rather than EUR3 for the same sweatshop shirt at Primark, or maybe our subsidized dairy costs a little more than the EU's ludicrously-subsidized dairy, but nothing that makes a dent on the spending power on all but the poorest fifth of society.

The poorest fifth are the fifth who feel it the most. Day-to-day sundries are far cheaper here than in Canada--running out of shampoo isn't a minor crisis that'll spike your grocery bill by 10%. Even without being really poor, that warms the cockles of my cheap-ass heart.

On the other hand, consumer electronics can be drastically more expensive here. It's an established thing to wait for an opportune trip to the States to buy Apple products. But nobody really needs Apple products.

I only have my nose to support this, but I suspect there are fewer weird smelling families here who wash everything from clothes to hair with the same bottle of Sunlight dish detergent but who still have a PS5 and 4K TV.


And there's beer. 50 cents a litre is cheap enough to make a rich man's liver sing.

[Manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Canada is not a cheap country, but I find that other than the usual elephants in the room: housing (if you insist on buying, rather than renting) and higher education, I don't think the cost of everything else makes much of a material difference in the lives of Canadians.

Like, maybe you have to spend CAD10 for a sweatshop-made t-shirt at Joe Fresh rather than EUR3 for the same sweatshop shirt at Primark, or maybe our subsidized dairy costs a little more than the EU's ludicrously-subsidized dairy, but nothing that makes a dent on the spending power on all but the poorest fifth of society.

But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Canada's housing alone makes it an extreme outlier. Not to mention telecoms are much more expensive, airfare is more expensive, and wages are lower.

Add all of that up, and Canada is one of the highest cost of living places in the world.

Unless paying $2 million USD for a older home that would cost $200k in Buffalo is what passes for cheap these days. Heck, I could get a brand new 6,000 square foot home in the poshest neighborhoods of Washington D.C. for that price.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Canada's housing alone makes it an extreme outlier.

Add all of that up, and Canada is one of the highest cost of living places in the world.

Unless paying $2 million USD for a older home that would cost $200k in Buffalo is what passes for cheap these days. Heck, I could get a brand new 6,000 square foot home in the poshest neighborhoods of Washington D.C. for that price.

But that’s home ownership, which is different from housing (i.e. shelter).

If you just want a place to live, and not an asset, Canadian cities are still reasonable. You can rent an entire house like this in a good neighbourhood of Toronto for CAD 3,500/month. The median 1 BR is ~CAD 1,400, which is much lower than high cost US city rents, even accounting for lower incomes.

Canada has a housing bubble, and I think it’s a major concern, but more because of the implications of household debt, not because it leads to Canadians having a lower material standard of living. Just because a home with the same outward appearance costs ten times as much as it does in Buffalo doesn’t mean that your dollar goes ten times as far in Buffalo.

[Manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

But that’s home ownership, which is different from housing (i.e. shelter).

If you just want a place to live, and not an asset, Canadian cities are still reasonable. You can rent an entire house like this in a good neighbourhood of Toronto for CAD 3,500/month. The median 1 BR is ~CAD 1,400, which is much lower than high cost US city rents, even accounting for lower incomes.

Canada has a housing bubble, and I think it’s a major concern, but more because of the implications of household debt, not because it leads to Canadians having a lower material standard of living. Just because a home with the same outward appearance costs ten times as much as it does in Buffalo doesn’t mean that your dollar goes ten times as far in Buffalo.

Home ownership in the U.S. is an inflation hedge and vital in keeping down cost-of-living.

We have 30-year (and even 40-year now) fixed rates (unlike Canada), so I know that when I spend $500k to buy a home next year in suburban D.C., I'll have $2,000 payments for 30 years. Those payments will decline in real terms over time as inflation weakens the value of $2,000 and my salary increases. So my year 1 mortgage payment is essentially the hardest to accommodate. Over time, housing will get cheaper for me in real terms.

I'm renting now and my rent goes up 10% each year. The people who bought their townhome in 2018 across the street see no such increase, since their mortgage payment is locked in.

So I face the full brunt of cost-of-living increases, while a home owner gets the equity, the home appreciation, and avoids inflationary rent increases.

Also, you're thinking about standard of living now. The person with the home in 2050 will have a far higher standard of living since they'll have paid themselves 360 monthly installments of $1,500 instead of that money going to pad the profits of a slumlord or numbered company.

There's a huge financial incentive to owning a home versus renting.

Canada has largely 5-year fixed rates, so one of the key benefits (walling yourself off from inflationary increases) isn't as stable, but the gains of equity accumulation and price appreciation certainly still apply.

Of course, this is all looking at housing in historical terms. Canada's housing market is so abnormal, that buying a home now in Canada has massive risks if the bubble pops. So when I speak of the benefits of home ownership, I'm talking about a sane market like Buffalo where you're not going to be $100k underwater in 3 years because you bought at the top.