World wide cost of living rankings for 2012 | Hacker News Reader

World wide cost of living rankings for 2012

numbeo.com

75 pointsrabble60 comments

As an aside: The website uses jQuery's grid plugin ( http://www.trirand.com/blog ) to present the data.

There is a newer plugin called DataTables ( http://datatables.net/ ) which I find to be much nicer, especially when combined with JQuery DataTables Editable ( http://code.google.com/p/jquery-datatables-editable/ ).

The interface is horrible, both the table and the map. It's so easy to add info bubbles on Google Maps, not sure why that was left out.

Well, this is definitely not entirely accurate. It has Phoenix, AZ as being more expensive than San Jose, CA. Having lived in both places I can say the cost of living in Phoenix is about half that of San Jose so its entirely wrong on that. I suppose its just mean to give a general idea overall and maybe was taking in data in some strange way to where it counted a large rural area that also included San Jose, or something, against just the urban area of Phoenix.

The small map image seems out of sync with the live map.

I'm in Darwin, Australia. The small map (correctly in my view) shows us as bright red -- quite expensive -- because of the combination of isolation (high fuel, food, labour costs) and land shortages (ie high rent).

I see people in SV and NYC complain about the rent. Well I pay that much ... and I don't earn SV / NYC wages. And I don't live in one of the Earth's great commercial or cultural epicentres.

I would if I could.

So quitcherwhinin'.

Darwin looks kind of relaxed and suburban compared to cities with serious geographic constraints. Sydney, San Francisco, Manhattan, and West Vancouver are all jammed tight because of ocean and rivers. They're also stacked to overflowing with tall towers if not simply wall to wall buildings.

You're certainly right about the isolated part, though. Might as well be half way around the world from your nearest neighbor!

We have legal and political constraints that are not visible on a map, mixed in with generous lashings of political incompetence.

Basically the same as everywhere, minus the natural advantages to trade.

Apart from the ruinous cost of living, Darwin is a city I like living in. I just don't like working here.

Suspect. The grocery index for Chicago is 72 and in Baltimore it's 101. Are groceries really 40% more in Baltimore than in Chicago? They're likely not more at all. In fact, on the whole, Chicago is more expensive than Baltimore. That's just a fact. But the figures here say otherwise.

Agree - looking at 2011 Moscow, Russia, it shows it as way cheaper than most US cities, but Moscow routinely ranks in top 5 most expensive cities on earth. Real estate prices there are comparable to NYC and food prices aren't cheap either (was just there few months ago).

Have not been to Chicago in a while, from my older (several years old) recollections it is not drastically different from Baltimore. However: Moscow is definitely cheaper than its usual "top 5" ranking. For a middle class visitor or city dweller, anyway (cannot say for a very short-term business visitor). Caveat: knowing Russian would help greatly but is not mandatory.

I'd like to see where Perth sits on that scale. There's a pub here that charges $18 (~$19US) for a pint of Hoegaarden and an average pint of beer is $10.

I'm from Perth but now live in NYC and I've lived in London, Zurich and Germany.

I can tell you that the erosion in the real standard of living in Australia, particularly Perth, in the last decade is mind-blowing.

The way I see it the resources boom has driven up the cost of construction both directly (through infrastructure projects) and indirectly (increased demand for residential housing from net migration). It now costs anywhere from $1500-2000/m2 to build a house.

That's insane.

That cost is then passed on through wage demands, the cost of running any business and so on. Rent is at or above New York levels (my old apartment in West Perth is now more expensive than my apartment in Manhattan).

Apart from roughly comparable rent in NYC, everything else is significantly cheaper.

Increased population pressure, property prices and construction costs are also reflected in the skyrocketing price increases in food, water and power.

London is (or at least was the last time I visited) reasonably expensive.

Zurich has a reputation for being expensive but honestly it's not anymore. Fact is, you can still get a studio in the city for maybe under CHF1000/month (something you can't in Perth). Yes food is more expensive but you pay lower taxes and everything else is, at worst, comparable in cost. I look at property prices in nice towns like Zug or Luzern and (IMHO) it's way more affordable than Perth.

So ignore whatever the CPI tells you about Australia. IMHO it's not a place you want to live now unless you have owned property for at least 10 years (and thus rode the property boom and are reasonably cashed up) or are rich. Either way it's one of the most expensive countries on the planet now.

Perth's main disadvantage is that it is wedged between the hills and the sea, which is why it is steadily growing into one of the longest conurbations in the world.

On the other hand, public transport on the north-south axis is reasonably good thanks to an uncharacteristic degree of planning foresight starting in the 60s.

If you don't have to live in the CBD or adjacent, Perth can be very affordable. You just have to shop around or put up with a 30 minute commute on a train (oh noes!).

Agreed on all points.

Question is : what can be done?

I would say a property price drop would be a good thing because it would feed into lower rents for everything. But that, of course, would have damaging wealth effects for people who lose everything when their mortgage went underwater, and the banks would take massive losses on their oversized residential mortgage portfolios.

More economic growth might reignite property and job markets.

I was talking to a friend of mine in Sydney who earns 200k plus. He was struggling with the idea of buying an average townhouse in an average Sydney suburb because his mortgage + expenses would run over $3k per month. It's madness.

Are we to just stagnate our way out of it? Hold property prices and rents level for 10 years while incomes eke upwards? Or is Australia destined to be in the Norway/Switzerland/Sweden club forever more, and the cheap-as-chips country of my youth is gone forever?

I just can't get away from the uncomfortable feeling that whatever adjustment comes along will be painful.

I think the real estate prices here are more a side effect of the mining boom rather than the drivers of the cost of living here. We recently got a quote of $5000 for paving ~30m^2 out the back of our house. It's a joke. Trades people are in such high demand here that they can charge more than surgeons.

I worry about the effect that this is going to have on the education level of the local populace. What's the incentive to stay in school to Yr 12 when you can drop out at 15, get an apprenticeship and be earning a motza by the time you're 18?

Check the 2011 rankings. Perth comes in just after the usual Norway and Switzerland usual suspects.

I don't know how it can be fixed, but Australia's insane cost of living explosion needs to be sorted out. I suspect most of it is real-estate related (ie, the pub needs to pay huge rent so passes it on in beer costs).

It used to be that someone in the UK or USA could sell their house and move to Australia and live the good life. Now that same strategy would see you living a crappy life in a bad suburb.

Several of my friends have recently made the decision to move to the USA where they can. The economy isn't great, but the cost of living can't be beat if you do have a job.

It's partially real estate, but I think it's also a combination of a tight labour market distorted by big mining wages and a "captive audience". Perth (and Darwin) are so isolated that the hospitality industry seem to get away with murder.

The good news for HNers - there is abundant work here. If you know people outside the tech scene, they could do a lot worse than get a working holiday visa and visit Australia whilst the US or UK economies improve.

In the States we'll just drive further out and try to urban sprawl our way out of high housing prices...usually with miserable traffic problems as a result.

Any idea why Australia, with more than ample land, and relatively small population doesn't attempt the same?

(not saying it's a good idea, but interesting to notice at any rate)

Outside of the large cities infrastructure is almost non-existent. The national highway network is horrible compared to the US, the rail network is even pokier. Hospitals and schools are of a much lower standard as well government just doesn't have the money to build this stuff.

Secondly, large businesses who provide employment don't want to be based outside of large cities because there's no talent so you get this problem the net migration is to the large cities forcing up real-estate prices and labour costs.

It's this vicious catch-22 - how can you attract people and businesses to regional centres without investing in infrastructure yet where's the demand to build infrastructure if populations of said regional centres is declining not increasing.

It's 2012 and the drive to urbanization (especially mega cities) has never been greater than now and yet to solve some of Australia's structural economic problems we need to attract people away from big cities by creating self-sustaining (in the sense it provides adequate opportunities for its own population) regional towns with fast rail links to major cities. It's an impossible feat with the system of Government we have now which fosters basically a 2 party system where both are slightly right of centre and stuck in their echo chamber of mediocrity.

Usually urban planning restrictions and poor roads stops too much outward flow. Having said that, I do believe Perth is spreading fast enough. However new suburbs that are constructed are rarely considered 'affordable' suburbs. They are usually shiny new estates with big houses.

> Any idea why Australia, with more than ample land, and relatively small population doesn't attempt the same?

Our land and planning laws are amongst the most complicated and restrictive on Earth. A comparable economy is Texas - but Texas has very light land release rules and so housing prices there have remained, in real terms, much more reasonable.

Additionally, almost all of our major cities are wedged between the ocean and hills or mountain ranges.

hehe sounds like my life, moved back from San Francisco to Sydney last year and whereas I used to live a 15 minute bicycle ride from work in SOMA I now live 35 minutes train ride from Sydney CBD to hold my housing costs at the same level.

"Eating Out" has all but disappeared from my life because to get equivalent quality restaurant food, it's about double to triple the cost of SF. I drink a lot less beer too now don't know whether it's good or bad.

I suspect you're right, all the 'nice stuff' and discretionary leisure activities are in the expensive areas so we're all paying indirectly for the insane price of real-estate.

Even though I have a mortgage I'm really hoping prices stagnate in absolute $ terms so our real standard of living can catch up again.

That's in the CBD. Not representative of Perth at large.

Seems to me there is some good money to be made where high and low cost of living adjoin.

For example Vienna and Bratislava.

If nothing else, if you can work in the high cost of living place, and live in the low cost area.

This actually happens frequently here in Vienna.

There are quite a large number of Slovak students and assistants at my university.

It is also common for Viennese to use the Bratislava airport instead of Wien Schwechat because of the lower airport charge.

Those two cities are only a half an hour drive apart from each other. We now even use the same currency.

I think most austrian people don't do that because of the language barrier (slovakian/german) and the fact that you can live quite cheaply in some areas in vienna where you need just 20-30 minutes to the city centers while a bus or train to bratislava will take you about an hour. But there are quite a lot slovakian people who work in vienna and live in bratislava.

Or where it's easy to fly from one place to another. It explains why there are so many hackers in Portland. It's a nice place to live with noticeably cheaper cost of living than Seattle or San Francisco. I know folks who consider it a bedroom community to silicon valley, only 550 miles away.

If you don't mind living in a suburb, the ultimate low cost move is to live in Vancouver, Washington. It is literally a few miles from Portland just across the border. If you work there, you pay no state income taxes. And I'm sure you could rent a place cheaper there as well. If you spend your money in Portland, you pay no sales tax.

I don't do this because I love living right in the heart of Portland way too much though.

I'm a bit intrigued by this, could you elaborate a bit more? Are they working as contractors commuting once a month for meetings, etc or doing their own ventures where they are coming down for meetings with investors?

I, for example, am a regular telecommuting employee of a large company in San Jose. Nominally, I'm in San Jose for one week every quarter, though it has been less than that lately. I spend a lot of time on the phone and on video conferences.

PS: Nit. It's about 650 miles from Portland to SJ.

If you don't mind my asking, I am curious if you got the job also while living remotely or did you live in northern California, got the job and then later moved out of state to work remotely? I'm currently out of state, looking to move back to California as its where I'm from so I'm wondering if there is a possibility for finding a job where I work remotely which would certainly make the move a lot smoother, already have a job there.

Sorry for the delayed reply.

I lived in SJ from 1992-2001. I knew my current boss from that time. Sometime around 2006, while I was living here in Oregon, he emailed me and asked if I might be interested in doing X for him.

I've gotten my last seven jobs through friends. The last two have been since I moved to Oregon. The last time I applied for a job where I didn't know anybody was 1985.

My brother-in-law worked recently in Germany, right near the Swiss border. He said it was quite common for people to work in Switzerland, but live in and commute from Germany.

That just puts a discrete monetary value on time spent commuting. It's conceptually no different from moving out from (nice) downtown into the suburbs or exurbs. Your suburb's just a bit farther and over a largely imaginary line.

Seeing this makes me wonder, because I've dabbled with the thought of living a year in NYC ever since I visited this summer, but I have been put off by all the warnings here on HN and elsewhere stating that the cost of living there is insane. My current city of residence, Trondheim, Norway is ranking top for consumer price and second for consumer price + rent in this ranking. And still, living as a single male on state scholarship and loans (which adds up to about $15k a year), I live in a pretty ok standard apartment with a room mate and don't save on food etc. at all. I have zero credit-card debt etc. (I could easily do the same in Stavanger, Norway, which ranks higher for cost of rent.)

What am I missing?

I lived in NYC for a bit so I'll tell you what I liked and what I didn't.

One of the things I liked the most was the subway and public transportation system. I didn't have a car at the time and the system was relatively cheap. The system allowed me to get back and forth to my job everyday while also enabling me to head down to Manhattan or other boroughs (I was in Queens) for fun. While it did take time, I had time to spare, but not much money so it worked.

The people. NYC has a very diverse set of people, like in many other large cities. In NYC, you can meet anyone, with a broad range of cultures, but you are in control of your own destiny. In my experience, nobody (most) talked to anyone unless they knew someone ahead of time. It was a funny feeling at first, people would be sitting directly across from each other (6 feet/2 meters) - totally ignoring each others' existence. But! If you were interested in getting to know someone you could, most people were receptive when talked to. Sure, there are a few assholes, but there's always assholes in the group. Included in this are roommates, if you manage to get a good set of roommates while there, that's awesome. If you don't, you can always move. I was lucky in this respect.

NYC has pretty much everything you could want to do, plays, movies, museums, beaches, ice skating, gyms, martial arts, the list goes on except mountain stuff, and even then it's within traveling distance. I enjoy snowboarding so that's one of my main reasons for not wanting to live there. I don't have the time to travel that much anymore, unfortunately.

NYC has a huge mount of opportunity in most industries if you're looking for a job. You just have to reach out and capture it, nobody will hand it to you (usually).

The things I didn't like...

The perception of certain areas. The Bronx, Harlem, some parts of Brooklyn and Queens have bad reputations. Some of it is true but mostly not. There are lot of things in these areas you wouldn't see elsewhere in NYC. I feel you wouldn't get an accurate portrayal of NYC if you didn't go to these areas. The key is to not go out asking for trouble by flashing money around or causing people grief (making people look stupid). Walk confidently and with purpose and you won't usually have an issue. I also wouldn't go wandering around these areas in the dark after drinking either.

Initially, I hated the in-your-face sales approaches that vendors typically use. I got used to it, again, act confidently and don't let them take your money unless you really want what they're selling.

I'm not sure how grocery stores in Norway work but NYC is nothing like I ever knew. It was tough getting to them and even then, it was often public market or corner store food. It is somewhat expensive. Wholesale stores typically have better deals, if you can find one (BJs, Costco, Sam's Club, etc).

After awhile I started missing having a front yard to play with my dogs in. I didn't have much of a yard at the apartments I lived at.

It was a very valuable experience. It helped me grow as a person and helped me learn many different things. If I had to do it over again, I would.

That's it for now; if you have any questions feel free to ask me. Good luck in your travels.

Thank you very much for taking the time to write such an elaborate response, comments like these are some of what makes the HN community great!

>In my experience, nobody (most) talked to anyone unless they knew someone ahead of time. It was a funny feeling at first, people would be sitting directly across from each other (6 feet/2 meters) - totally ignoring each others' existence.

This is a norwegian city in a nutshell, so I'm really used to that. I don't really have a problem with it, until I travel to places where the locals are much more open and friendly than I am used to.

>I enjoy snowboarding so that's one of my main reasons for not wanting to live there.

I'm an avid skier as well, and this is probably the main reason holding me back so far. In this regard, another city which I like very much, Vancouver, BC, is obviously more suited for living. How is the tech industry there anyway?

>The Bronx, Harlem, some parts of Brooklyn and Queens have bad reputations.

The concierge at my hotel kept saying that we shouldn't go to some of these places unguided, but much of it seemed unfounded. Obviously I understand that there are neighborhoods that you shouldn't walk around in alone after nightfall, but to be honest Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn where the places I felt most like home when I was there. Manhattan seems more foreign for someone coming from a city with the tallest building being 320 feet and that is a cathedral with a spire I guess.

>I'm not sure how grocery stores in Norway work but NYC is nothing like I ever knew. It was tough getting to them and even then, it was often public market or corner store food. It is somewhat expensive. Wholesale stores typically have better deals, if you can find one (BJs, Costco, Sam's Club, etc).

I LOVED the grocery stores in NYC to be totally honest; dirt cheap in comparison to Norway and fantastic food on the whole. I would love to see what you pass as great grocery stores :)

>That's it for now; if you have any questions feel free to ask me. Good luck in your travels.

Thank you again for taking the time, and good luck to you too!

Looking at the methodology [1], I have some doubts about the validity of all these numbers. Apparently they're at least partially user-submitted, which implies to me that there's likely to be some bias, depending on who actually took the time to submit information.

For example, the site claims that residents of Indianapolis, IN have the most (average) purchasing power of anyone in the world, by an incredible margin. Indianapolis is nice enough, but I'd be shocked if that were true.

Still a cool/interesting site, but I would take it with a grain of salt.

[1] http://www.numbeo.com/common/motivation_and_methodology.jsp

Yeah, you're right, the methodology doesn't really inspire confidence in the results.

As an anecdote though, when I was vacationing there this summer all groceries, restaurants and similar felt incredibly cheap, and although rent on Manhattan was steep, I found a comparable apartment to my own in Williamsburg that had a slightly higher cost than what I am paying now. Maybe what I'm missing is health insurance? How much does it cost a normally fit 21 year old male for full coverage insurance?

Most folks who are fit and 21 just go without health insurance. If you've got a job and aren't contracting, then you usually get insurance through work.

So.. If I got ill, what would happen? In reality I would have insurance by the norwegian government, but assuming I was american. What does the regular student that doesn't get help from his parents do?

From what I recall, students can be covered by their parents' health insurance until they're 26 as long as they're still in school. That's what most college students do.

If they're not in school, and they don't have their own job that provides health insurance, well...honestly, if they don't have a job that provides it, then they probably don't have a job that pays enough that they can afford to get it independently either. Most of my friends in that situation just gamble and try not to go to a doctor unless absolutely necessary. If they do have to...well, then they're going to be in some serious debt.

It's not a very good system, but it works for the people who have influence.

High deductible insurance is about 600-1000 dollars a year, and the deductible is 2500-10000 dollars (meaning the first 2500-10000 dollars of your expenses are out of pocket, and then after that everything is covered).

I would definitely second your suspicion. There is no way Edinburgh (where I live) can even touch the prices in London, and yet they're listed very closely on these results.

Indeed: rents and real estate prices have zero impact on the CPI. That explains why places like Hong Kong and Shanghai seem so reasonable (which they're not)...

You can totally share a 1-br apartment for $500/each + utilities. But, NYC apartments (in the low price range) are small, old, and dirty. I did a few months of consulting out in NYC, and the company kept an apartment for just such an occasion. According to Zillow it was a $1500/month (this was some years ago) and about 400 square feet. It was a studio, so the bed was in the living room.

What you're hearing is basically a quality of life argument. If that's the kind of situation you want to get into, you should go for it. If you have a family or, you know, want some of your own space, the price rises dramatically.

Families live in the outer boroughs. A 3 bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens will run you about 2000 dollars a month and you are still within a 30 minute commute to most of Manhattan.

New York is perhaps a very big city, where you can be in 'new york city' and still be 2 hours subway ride from lower manhattan.

I'd guess the other thing is that in new york you're exposed to people who are very wealthy. It distorts the perceived cost of living vs actual numbers.

you can live a reasonably cheap life in new york--live in brooklyn/queens/nj, make food at home or eat in one of the three chinatowns, etc.

the expenses add up when you live in manhattan (probably $1k/month minimum depending on neighborhood), go out to eat and drink, and, essentially, exist. every time you walk outside you can deduct like $20 from your bank account.

I'm new to NYC and live and work in Midtown Manhattan. Can you elaborate on "three Chinatowns"? I know the one on Canal Street, also the one in Flushing. Where's the third?

Brooklyn.

This totally flies in the face of Wolphram Alpha's data: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chicago+vs+phoenix+vs+d...

Phoenix, where I live, is cheaper according to Wolphram Alpha than Dallas, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Devner whereas it's more expensive according to Numbeo's list.

As a Canadian, surprised they didn't include Vancouver. Which I suspect would be at or near the top of the list for this country.

Vancouver is on page two, ahead of Toronto by a few spots (but well worth the cost difference in my opinion)

Bwah, you're absolutely right.

Full blame goes to the UI. If I type a query into a search box, I expect it to search the full list. Not just the handful of entries on that page.

Yeah, Montreal and Halifax, but no Vancouver, Calgary or Toronto

How do I compare cities? (e.g. Axxx with Zxxx)

I think they mean for 2011 (more precisely, Q4 2011), as we don't have data for 2012 yet. This doesn't inspire confidence in the accuracy of the numbers.

Use the year drop down at the top of the page. That loads the 2011 data. You're correct in that the 2012 data is too patchy to be taken seriously.

Any list of expensive cities not topped by Oslo is kidding itself. That place is insane.

Does anyone know why the purchasing power is so high in Indianapolis, IN?

Seems odd.

All indian cities comfortably sit at the bottom of the scale!

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