30 November 2012

Canberra in the top 20 most expensive cities for expats in the world?

| perfectstranger
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According to an article published on news.com.au Canberra is the twelfth most expensive expat city to live ahead of New York City, Shanghai and Zurich.

The survey claims to take into account cost of living but not health and schooling. Cities like Melbourne, LA and Dubai don’t rate a mention on the list…

Will be interesting to see what fellow Canberrans have to say to this new survey….

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drfelonious said :

Yes I have been saying for some time that we have a completely ridiculous situation of Canberra being the most expensive city in the world for its size for housing.

This situation is manifestly unsustainable. Something has to give and soon – the fact that listings for rentals and houses for sale has just about doubled in the last year tells you all you need to know.

If you read the article and how the figures were derived you would see that it doesnt actually “prove” that Canberra house are too high. Just the ones dern furreners choose to live in. Big expat community in OMalley. Whats the rents like there?

Antagonist said :

davo101 said :

drfelonious said :

Yes I have been saying for some time that we have a completely ridiculous situation of Canberra being the most expensive city in the world for its size for housing.

Supply and demand. If Canberra wasn’t such a *hard place to escape from* then housing prices wouldn’t be as high.

There ya are, davo. Fixed that massive typo for you. Less than two years until I complete my degree … then outta here 🙂

Not actually a typo. I think you’re overlooking the fact that the word attractive has at least two different meanings. You appear to be thinking of attractive as meaning alluring or appealing where as I was meaning having the power of attracting. The fact that you are living here demonstrates that Canberra is attractive to you whether or not you find it alluring.

Yeah its definately supply and demand. My take is that whilever the government gets more money from developers and stamp duties due to higher property costs, the supply will be limited to keep the budget afloat. Thats why I like the getting rid off the stamp duty idea. My concern is if liberals couldn’t get in with the triple rates campaign though will they ever be able to win an election outright in Canberra?

We’ll probably have 2 federal elections by then as well, so who knows what will happen.

davo101 said :

drfelonious said :

Yes I have been saying for some time that we have a completely ridiculous situation of Canberra being the most expensive city in the world for its size for housing.

Supply and demand. If Canberra wasn’t such a *hard place to escape from* then housing prices wouldn’t be as high.

There ya are, davo. Fixed that massive typo for you. Less than two years until I complete my degree … then outta here 🙂

drfelonious said :

Yes I have been saying for some time that we have a completely ridiculous situation of Canberra being the most expensive city in the world for its size for housing.

Supply and demand. If Canberra wasn’t such an attractive enough place to live in then housing prices wouldn’t be as high.

There are two factors that I foresee changing Canberra’s status of “expensive to live in” sometime in the near future:

1. Libs winning an election in the ACT. Canberran home owners are lucky to have Labour in government yet again. Once the libs get in, public service jobs get slashed, people leave, and house prices go down.

2. More public servants working remotely, especially with the advent of the NBN, and students also doing degrees online, rather than living in the ACT. This will improve affordability for everyone at the expense of those who make their living by being physically present in the ACT.

It will happen eventually. Sorry to be the messenger.

Yes I have been saying for some time that we have a completely ridiculous situation of Canberra being the most expensive city in the world for its size for housing.

This situation is manifestly unsustainable. Something has to give and soon – the fact that listings for rentals and houses for sale has just about doubled in the last year tells you all you need to know.

Tetranitrate2:30 pm 30 Nov 12

-shouldn’t have written ‘any meaningful definition’ rather ‘the abs definition’.

Tetranitrate2:29 pm 30 Nov 12

watto23 said :

It doesn’t surprise me at all. Canberra is expensive place to live. Wages are high here as well and unemployment low. There are probably few other cities that boast an average wage as high as Canberras with a really low unemployment rate as well.

I’ve known a few people to leave here based on cost of living. They left for Melbourne and Brisbane and it seems both those cities are generally more affordable.

To be honest unemployment numbers don’t really reflect the significant numbers of people on low incomes in Canberra. It’s a university town as well as the national capital – there’d be ~20,000 full time students at ANU and UC, none of whom are unemployed by any meaningful definition but the vast majority of which would have incomes of less than $30,000 a year. I can’t think of any other cities in Australia with such a high proportion.

Canberra had a similar enough makeup 20 years ago too but actually had a fairly low cost of living – it’s only really been over the past 10 years or so that it began to become really expensive to live here and it’s not a natural consequence of high-ish public servant wages.

It doesn’t surprise me at all. Canberra is expensive place to live. Wages are high here as well and unemployment low. There are probably few other cities that boast an average wage as high as Canberras with a really low unemployment rate as well.

I’ve known a few people to leave here based on cost of living. They left for Melbourne and Brisbane and it seems both those cities are generally more affordable.

King_of_the_Muppets1:53 pm 30 Nov 12

Well its all rather unimportant to ‘normal’ Canberra residents.

Given the expat’s choose where to live, and those who choose to live in Canberra, may be likely to choose more exclusive real-eastate. They may be from diplomatic or similar backgrounds and have become accustomed to the inner north.

Tetranitrate said :

davo101 said :

2. Rent cost are based on the properties that ex-pats choose to live in. Perhaps the ones that live in Canberra choose to live on Mugga Way and the ones in Melbourne in some cheapo area?

Why would this be the case?
Anyway rents in Melbourne are (relatively) cheap compared to Canberra or Sydney across the board. Even trendy inner city areas like Fitzroy are quite affordable compared to their nearest Canberra equivalents (inner north). Fact is that it’s expensive to live here.

To quote the authors of the report:

The ranking is based on surveys conducted in June 2012 and includes rent costs. It should be noted that the rent prices used in this study are those paid by expatriates and that they are not
representative for average rents paid by local inhabitants of the surveyed locations.

Tetranitrate1:06 pm 30 Nov 12

davo101 said :

2. Rent cost are based on the properties that ex-pats choose to live in. Perhaps the ones that live in Canberra choose to live on Mugga Way and the ones in Melbourne in some cheapo area?

Why would this be the case?
Anyway rents in Melbourne are (relatively) cheap compared to Canberra or Sydney across the board. Even trendy inner city areas like Fitzroy are quite affordable compared to their nearest Canberra equivalents (inner north). Fact is that it’s expensive to live here.

Yep, sounds about right to me.

Couple of points:

1. The ranks are based on costs converted to Euros so as Europe’s economy goes down the toilet the more expensive Australia appears to be to live in.

2. Rent cost are based on the properties that ex-pats choose to live in. Perhaps the ones that live in Canberra choose to live on Mugga Way and the ones in Melbourne in some cheapo area?

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