Singapore is Asia's most expensive city in 2023

On May 25, 2023, people take pictures of the Marina Bay Sands hotel resort in Singapore. The Urban Land Institute said that Singapore's private home prices have surpassed Hong Kong as the most expensive in Asia Pacific in 2023, while rental rates in the city-state were also the region's highest.

The APAC's 2023 APAC Home Attainability Index revealed that the median price for a Singapore home was $1.2 million compared to $1.16 million in Hong Kong, where prices dropped 15 percent last year. The average house in Sydney sold for a reported $980,000, making it the third-largest property in the nation.

Singapore's property market has been unusually resilient, with prices increasing 8.6 percent last year and 10.6 percent in 2021, prompting authorities to introduce tough new cooling measures.

Singapore firms scramble to soften the blow of soaring rent costs.

The average monthly rents in Singapore rose to $2,598, trailing behind Sydney houses at $1,958 and Sydney apartments at $1,732 in Asia-Pacific. Hong Kong was fourth at $1,686 on the list.

The rise in rents and housing prices in Singapore were driven by a large influx of immigrants and a surge in the trend among young professionals to move out of multi-generational family homes, the institute said.

However, Singapore offered the most affordable home ownership thanks to its government-constructed Housing and Development Board flats, which sold for a median price just 4.7 times the median household income.

The report compared housing prices with the median incomes of 45 cities across the Asia-Pacific region. monthly rents were viewed as more affordable, with monthly rents in most cities below 30 percent of the median household income. The rent-to-income ratio was the lowest in Japan and South Korea.