This City Has the Most Expensive Homes in the World

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 5, 8:05AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This City Has the Most Expensive Homes in the World — © Garsya / iStock via Getty Images

Real estate prices in the United States have surged recently. By most measures, the median value of a home in the United States reached an all-time high last year. Depending on the source, the number approached $300,000. In some west coast markets, led by Los Angeles and San Francisco, the number was closer to $1 million. Strong income growth among middle- and upper-class Americans helped boost prices. So did mortgage rates near historic lows. Data for the first quarter of 2021 shows the trend continued.

However, the United States does not have the most expensive home prices. That distinction belongs to one of the smallest nations in the world, geographically.

Real estate firm Savills has posted an analysis of home prices by nation and by square meter. This allows for an accurate comparison regardless of home size. One meter equals 10.8 square feet.

Monaco had the highest price at €47,600 ($55,895) per square meter. Hong Kong ranked next at €39,600, and New York City followed at €22,200. The next U.S. city on the list was San Francisco, which ranked 13th at €13,700.
[nativounit]
Savills expects Monaco to keep its lead: “International interest in Monaco was sustained throughout 2020 and Savills expects to see a surge of demand for both sales and rentals once travel restrictions are lifted.”

Monaco has two distinct reasons that drive its high real estate prices. The first is median income. Monaco’s is the highest in the world at $186,080, followed by Bermuda at $117,730. The United States ranks ninth at $65,850.

Monaco also has very little land on which to build residential real estate. It ranks second from the bottom among 194 nations at 0.78 square miles, just above Vatican City where the number is 0.19. Monaco is also the most densely populated nation in the world, which leaves almost no place for residential real estate expansion.

These Savills’s 10 cities with the most expensive homes per square meter:

Monaco, €47,600
Hong Kong, €39,600
New York, €22,200
Tokyo, €20,400
Geneva, €19,100
Shanghai, €17,400
London, €17,000
Sydney, €15,900
Paris, €15,600
Seoul, €15,600

Click here to see which county has the most expensive homes in America.
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.