New York climbs the ranks of the world’s most expensive cities

New York has ousted London as the world’s second most expensive city to rent business and residential space for employees, according to new Savills research released this month.

The ‘Big Apple’ is now second only to Hong Kong, which maintains its global number 1 ranking, while Singapore has been found to offer businesses the best value accommodation in relation to the size of its economy.

In its latest World Cities Review, published this month, Savills updated its ‘total accommodation cost’ measure of the top 10 world cities and found that it has remained broadly stable, falling an average of just -0.05 per cent in the first half of 2013, but having risen in ‘old world’ cities and fallen in ‘new world ones.

According to Savills, this has made emerging and recently emerged markets relatively more competitive again, with Sydney, Shanghai and Mumbai offering the lowest total base business costs.

In comparison, Mumbai costs are around a quarter of those in Hong Kong.

The costs of accommodating core international business units in both prime financial and secondary ‘creative’ locations along with the associated residential rental requirements of 14 households are taken into account in the ‘total costs’ measure.

New York has risen from being the fifth most expensive city at the beginning of 2010 to 2nd by June 2013, after seeing total costs rise 36 per cent from their end 2009 nadir and a total of 19 per cent over the past five years.

London has recovered strongly, totalling 17 per cent since bottoming out in 2009 to sit in 3rd place.