Yarraville, Hawthorn, even East Melbourne lag behind the world's big cities for residential property prices: Paul Osborne

Talk often centres around Melbourne being an expensive city, and it is – make no mistake about it.

But how does Melbourne compare internationally?

We’ve analysed a number of Melbourne’s top suburbs to get an indicative price per square metre rate for property, and compared them to the world leaders across the globe.

For starters we’ve sourced the most expensive cities across the world to see how they compare. The top 10:

1. Monaco: $58,000 per square metre. This is world’s most expensive place. It helps when you don’t have to pay taxes!
2. London: $48,000 per sqm
3. Hong Kong: $45,000 per sqm (Houses only)
4. Geneva: $33,000 per sqm
5. Hong Kong: $27,000 per sqm(Apartments only)
6. Paris: $25,000 per sqm
7. Singapore: $24,000 per sqm
8. Moscow: $23,000 per sqm
9. Zurich: $23,000 per sqm
10. New York $21,500 per sqm (Apartments only)

(Data compiled for last quarter 2011)

We’ve used the average square metre price in Melbourne as our comparison point. We’ve also compared the most recent quarter prices and benchmarked them to houses only, so apartments have been excluded from the data.

So how do we compare for different suburbs? Here is an interesting selection:

• East Melbourne: $11,133 per sqm Melbourne’s highest-priced inner-city suburb, East Melbourne takes the cake.

• Carlton: $9,409 per sqm

• Fitzroy: $6,888 per sqm

• Brunswick: $3,380 per sqm (With 48 sales recorded, this was the largest data set collected for a suburb)

• Abbotsford: $6,785 per sqm

• Hawthorn: $3,443 per sqm (Suprising result)

• Albert Park: $8,181 per sqm

• North Melbourne: $7,230 per sqm

• West Melbourne: $4,986 per sqm

• Yarraville: $2,229 per sqm

• South Melbourne: $7,652 per sqm

Surprising outcomes were the low per square metre rate attributed to Hawthorn. Brunswick was the most accurate data example thanks to a pool of 48 transactions. The inner west showed the most favourable square metre rate, with Yarraville at just over $2,000 per square metre. West Melbourne was the most affordable suburb on the doorstep of the city.

Interesting takeaways are:

• London is 21.5 times more expensive than Yarraville
• Hong Kong is four times more expensive than East Melbourne
• Monaco is 16 times more expensive than Hawthorn (When it comes to price per square metre of real estate)

Melbourne is an expensive city. However compared to world standards, Melbourne is still far behind the big cities (or tax havens) when it comes to price per square metre of land.

Paul Osborne is the founder of Melbourne buyers' agency Secret Agent.