Most Expensive Cities In The World 2017: Where To Move If You Have Extra Cash To Burn

If you’re feeling restless — and if you happen to have an extra half-million in your pocket this year — maybe you should consider moving to Hong Kong. The Chinese city of nearly 7.2 million people was ranked the city with the least affordable housing market in 2017 by the 13th annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

Hong Kong has been on the list for seven years, and its ranking is measured by something called the “median multiple” metric. To calculate the median multiple, the median house price is divided by the median household income.

In the introduction to the December 2016 study, Oliver Hartwich, executive director of the New Zealand Initiative, wrote that the aim of releasing data was actually to help drive down housing prices.

“We need to tackle housing affordability urgently because the effects of unaffordable housing on society are becoming more visible by the day,” he wrote. “Policies that raise housing costs are always likely to hit those on low incomes the hardest. Thus in our work on different measures of poverty and inequality, we have argued that the best way to tackle both issues would be to make housing more affordable.”

Here’s the full list of the 10 most unaffordable cities in which to live in 2017:

1. Hong Kong
Population: 7.2 million
Median multiple: 18.1