For a $2 million property, the top three cities in our index with the highest overall transaction costs are Hong Kong, Singapore and Cape Town. Here, an international investor would be looking at costs relative to the purchase price of 33.9%, 25.1% and 23.8% respectively.

Singapore and Hong Kong have particularly high stamp duty for overseas buyers, standing at 20% and 15% respectively.

By contrast, markets across the US such as Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles have the lowest costs to purchase the property, with costs less than 1.0% of the purchase price. New York stands out amongst its neighbours with a higher purchasing cost at 4.0%. This is due to the ‘Mansion Tax’ introduced in the city in July 2019 which saw a change from a flat 1% surcharge on properties over $1 million to a progressive rate starting at 1.25% on homes between $2 million and $3 million and up to a maximum of 3.9% for homes above $25 million.

In terms of holding costs, Miami and Los Angeles are most expensive with occupancy taxes over a five-year period running at 8.3% and 6.3% of the purchase price respectively.

Bangkok has the highest selling cost out of the cities in the index, with costs standing at 10.8% of the price at the point of selling. Geneva is close second, and the only other city in the index where selling costs exceed 10%, standing at 10.7%.

It is the Chinese cities along with Moscow which have the overall lowest costs of buying, holding and selling a property. In China, with the exception of Shanghai, there are only buying costs to consider in this scenario.

_{Read the articles within Savills Prime Index: World Cities below.}