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In order to compare the cost of residential and commercial real estate across different global cities, we use the Savills Executive Unit (SEU), which measures the cost of housing an identical group of people living and working in various different countries.

By comparing a group of real people, our cost comparison of real estate has a ‘real world’ relocation story at its heart. We take a typical ‘executive unit’, a group of people that might start up or expand a global business in any country, and then compare the residential and commercial accommodation that they would be likely to inhabit in each of our world cities.

The people who make up our SEU include one middle-aged expat CEO, one senior expat director, a locally employed director and four locally employed administrative staff. They each live in different types of household, some with children, some with partners and some without, and each member of the group chooses different types of locations and different types of property in which to live.

To measure office costs, we place the same seven people in a financial services firm in the best part of the city, and again in a creative start-up in a secondary location in the same city.

It is by comparing the commercial and residential accommodation costs for these same people around the world that we can truly compare the cost of real estate across some very different global cities.

Taken from
Insights: World Cities Review - H2 2013

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