Numbeo's Economic Predictions For 2011

1. EUR/USD rate will raise to at least 1.45, since USA has big trade and fiscal deficit and EURO zone has trade sufficit (and smaller fiscal deficit).
2. EU bailout of Spain and Portugal (after Greece and Ireland).
3. Gold price will start to fall (comparing to EURO), since what goes up has to go down eventually.
4. Housing prices will decrease in most countries, especially in East Europe.
5. Oil prices above 120$ per barrel. With weaker USD and more consumption in 3th world countries the pressure on oil will continue in spite of clean energy incentives.
6. Increase of food prices worldwide due to food commodities increase - bread price will increase
7. More governmental interventions in the economy to speed up post Great Recession economical recovery.

Numbeo’s 2010 Cost of Living International Rankings

In Numbeo’s survey, New York is used as the base city for the index and scores 100 points, all cities are compared against New York and currency movements are measured against US Dollar and EURO. Copenhagen scores 138.91 points and is nearly three times as costly as Buenos Aires in Argentina with an index score of 47.15.

In the beginning of 2010, most expensive cities (excluding rent) are :
- Stavanger, Norway (CPI 169.20)
- Oslo, Norway (152.85)
- Breda, Netherlands (139.70)
- Copenhagen, Denmark (138.91)
- Zurich, Switzerland (132.03)
- Paris, France (130.30)
- Geneva, Switzerland (122.69)
- Milan, Italy (122.58)
- Dublin, Ireland (120.79)
- Brussels, Belgium (120.00)

The least expensive cities in 2010 are Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Pune in India, followed by Kiev (Ukraine), Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine), Bangkok (Thailand), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and La Paz (Bolivia).
Rent is most expensive in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) followed by London (United Kingdom), Geneva (Switzerland), Stavanger (Norway) and New York (United States).

Cities with lowest rent are Ahmedabad and Hyderabad in India. Other international citites with low rent are Medellin (Colombia), Constanta (Romania), Asuncion (Paraguay) and Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

On country level most expensive countries in 2010 are Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Finland.

The least expensive countries in 2010 are India, Ukraine, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Bolivia, Indonesia, China, Belarus, Ecuador and Romania.

For complete rankings please visit Cost of Living Index 2010.

About Numbeo.com –
Numbeo.com (http://www.numbeo.com) is the largest free Internet database about cost of living and property prices worldwide. Numbeo.com allows visitors to estimate their own cost of living expenses if they are relocating. It uses data contributions from people all around the world to make statistical analysis of these data for free availability to everyone in a structured manner. Getting these informations earlier was far more expensive and difficult. Numbeo provides different tools around its data like Cost of Living Calculator and Cost of Living Comparison. Numbeo publishes yearly indexes such as consumer price index and property market index per city and per country.

The founder of Numbeo.com is Mladen Adamovic. Mladen was a software engineer in Google Inc., Dublin, Ireland between Feb 2007 and Feb 2009. Before joining Google he spent three years teaching and researching at University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He obtained M.Sc. Electrical Engineering from University of Banja Luka in 2006 and B.Sc. Math from University of Belgrade in 2003.

Travel Costs Rankings for 2010 (Numbeo) : NYC is the most expensive, Delhi is the least expensive

Numbeo.com uses data provided by community members about prices in many cities worldwide. Among indexes it calculates are travel costs index. Travel costs index is a relative estimation of expenses for visitors in a given city and includes prices of hotels, restaurants and transportation.

In Numbeo’s survey, New York is used as the base city for the index and scores 100 points, all cities are compared against New York and currency movements are measured against US Dollar and EURO.

Places which are most expensive for regular visitors (assuming mid-range restaurant and 3 or 4 star hotels, taking some taxi and public transport) :

• New York, United States (100.00)
• Stavanger, Norway (94.81)
• Oslo, Norway (80.89)
• Paris, France (78.97)
• Copenhagen, Denmark (76.69)

The least expensive places for visitors are :

• Delhi, India (14.77)
• Hyderabad, India (14.80)
• Beijing, China (17.53)
• Bangkok, Thailand (17.79)
• Gurgaon, India (18.53)
• Bitola, Macedonia (19.84)

Backpacker’s travels index assumes visitor is using only public transportation, hostels and 1 and 2 star hotels and eating in inexpensive restaurants.

The most expensive places for backpacker’s are : Stavanger, Norway (256.60), Copenhagen (149.40), and Oslo, Norway (138.51). Caracas ranked very high 194.90 since hotels providers used in research (Kayak) didn’t offer more affordable accommodation.

The least expensive places for backpacker’s are Indian cities Ahmedabad, Delhi, Gurgaon followed by Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine and Bangkok in Thailand.

For complete rankings please visit http://www.numbeo.com/travel-costs/rankings.jsp

What are good housing indicators?

Rental yield :

3% = do not buy
6% = borderline
9% = ok to buy

House Price to Income Ratio:

11x = do not buy
8x = borderline
5x = buy

Is you area full of speculations? What was the price 1997 and add 3.5% of annual inflation. What do you get?

How well are weights for cost of living index balanced?

Perhaps you are curious if weights for cost of living index at this website are well balanced? The weights are best guess. So how good is our best guess for weights? For example today I wanted to check gasoline consumption per capita to see if weight for it is well balanced. The relevant document is at : consumption of gasoline per capita.

Consumption in Europe is most likely most relevant as middle income countries with average fuel consumption. Europe had per capita is 257 liter of gasoline consumption per year in 2005.

Weights in Numbeo.com statistical model are based on consumption for family of 4, and in Europe it is 1028 liter yearly or 85.66 liters monthly. And our best guess was 80 liters per month for the family. Since between 2000 and 2005 gasoline consumption per capita lowered in Europe, I’m concluding that our weights for gasoline are excellently balanced.

I hope you can now trust more the way how cost of living index at Numbeo.com website is calculated. If you think that some weights are not good balanced, just drop me an email with explanation. I performed some research for weight balancing. It hope you will find interesting cost of living indexes next year at Numbeo.com.

Q1 2010 Numbeo.com Website Statistics

In Q1 2010 Numbeo.com had 60.583 visitors (344.228 pageviews) according to Google Analytics. Current month to month traffic increase is 26%, but it was bouncing between -8% and 35% this year. Therefore I’m expecting more than 300.000 visitors this year to Numbeo.com website. Since data at this website are provided from community (and automatically and semi-automatically moderated), data are getting very reliable.

The visitors contributed 5019 new data entries in Q1 2010, (not counting data which were classified as spam and end-up trashed).

And Numbeo’s Cost of Living Index was accessed 12.438 times.

The website is using highly sofisticated automatic data validation techniques and high number of visitors ensure data are correct, however, like in Wikipedia, not all data are perfect. Dear readers, thank you for all contributions so far to this website.