Asia is the most expensive place to live in, if you’re rich: a quick Covid-19 recovery put Asia-Pacific ahead of the US and Canada, while Shanghai overtook Hong Kong as priciest city in the world

Apr 18 , 2021

Shanghai is now the priciest city in the world. Photo: Xinhua

The world’s 500 richest people added US$1.8 trillion to their fortunes during the pandemic, with Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos gaining the most

Julius Baer’s luxury lifestyle report also found that tech companies made huge profits with people turning to online services like streaming amid lockdowns

If you’re wealthy, the Asia-Pacific is the most expensive region to live in, with Shanghai newly overtaking Hong Kong as the priciest city in the world.

Those are some of the key findings from a Julius Baer Group report about luxury lifestyles released earlier this month. The reason? The region’s swift recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. By contrast, the Americas were the most affordable because of the slumps in the US and Canadian dollars and sharp devaluations of Latin American currencies.

San Po Kong, Hong Kong, in 2019. Photo: Shutterstock

Asian cities are more expensive partly because “Covid didn’t become an epidemic quite the same way it unfortunately became in the other cities in the index,” said Rajesh Manwani, Julius Baer’s head of markets and wealth-management solutions in Asia-Pacific. “So they were able to function more normally than the others.”

The Covid-19 crisis that has swept through the world and left hordes of people without jobs has also enriched the wealthy. Those from the tech industry have done particularly well as lockdowns helped accelerate a switch to online for everything from learning to shopping and socialising. The 500 richest people on Earth added a combined US$1.8 trillion to their fortunes last year, with Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos gaining the most, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Published om April 9, Julius Baer’s “Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report” analysed the price inflation of 20 luxury items indicative of the lifestyle of high-net-worth individuals in 25 cities across regions. To adapt to the changing world, the 2021 edition replaced categories including personal trainers, wedding banquets, Botox and pianos with bikes, treadmills, health insurance and a technology package.

While the collapse in tourism led to a 9.3 per cent plunge in the cost of hotel suites last year, business-class plane tickets became 11 per cent more expensive, the biggest jump among luxury categories as airlines had to make up for a scarcity of sales, Julius Baer said. The price of fancy shoes for women slumped the most, dropping 12 per cent.

In Asia, the cost of goods and services for the wealthy has been much lower than the region’s consumer-price index since 2013, it added.