Richmond Hill priced like Tokyo

October 5, 2017

A typical condominium in Richmond Hill, Ontario is more expensive on a square-foot basis than in Tokyo, according to an international survey of 75 cities in 27 countries by Century 21 Canada.
The survey was released September 27 and found that the average Richmond Hill condo sells for $833.20* per square foot, compared to $775.72 in Japan’s largest city.
(According to latest data from GTA research, a two-bedroom condo in Richmond Hill in August sold for $474,000, up 11 per cent from a year earlier. Japan Property Central reports that a typical Tokyo condo sold for an average of $393,700 in August, up 1% from a year earlier, so the Century 22 findings, while surprising, appear accurate.)
Based on detached home prices, Century 21 found that Montreal detached houses, at an average of $519.51 per square foot, are comparable to New York City, at $508.62 per square foot.
Hong Kong remains the world’s most expensive housing market, with the typical house in the Kowloon area priced at $3,750 per square foot and the average downtown condominium selling for $2,330 per square foot. This, Century 21 said, is much more expensive than second-place Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia, where the average condo is priced at $1,480 per square foot.
The data also revealed that West Vancouver, B.C., is close in price to San Francisco, with an average of $824.47 for a detached house compared to $935 per square foot in the California city. A typical West Vancouver condo sells for $1,172 per square foot, while San Francisco was ranked as having the third-most expensive condos in the world, at an average of $1,455 per square foot.
Beijing is the second-most expensive city to buy a single-family detached house at an average per-square-foot price of $1,005.
The least expensive city in the world to buy a house? That would be Maricaibo-Zulia, a city of three million in troubled Venezuela. A typical house sells for an average of $10 per square foot.
Canada’s urban centres “really rank in the middle of the pack when compared to other global cities,” said Century 21 Canada executive vice-president Brian Rushton. *All prices in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated.