Numbeo.com in the media / news

During more than two years of being online, Numbeo.com managed to bring attention of more than 2 million of visitors and was covered in many international newspapers and magazines.

Forbes said "Numbeo.com has relative country-by-country breakouts for rent, groceries and restaurants."

ABC (in Spanish) said : "and aroused by the curiosity of the bloggers for yesterday, Numbeo, a comparator cost of living between two countries, is the reference for averages price of some goods and services such as housing, public transportation or restaurants. "

Downloadsquad brought an article : "Comment followup: Numbeo is another (better) cost of living calculator"

Redferret magazine : "Numbeo, created by ex-Google engineer Mladen Adamovic, is an ultra cool data site which lets you compare the cost of living in your city with other cities around the country and the world."

Numbeo was covered in most major medias in Serbia (including B92 and Blic) and Romania (including Romania Libera, Gandul.info, Dailybusiness.ro, Informazia zilei, Libertatea, ...).

Numbeo was also in Bulgarian magazine Expert.bg, Spanish magazine Internetizado, German magazine "Lateinamerika Reisemagazin", Aministradores magazine in Brazil, etc.

The partial list with links is available at
http://www.numbeo.com/common/in_the_news.jsp

Numbeo's 2011 Cost of Living Index Highlights

Based on 38 goods and services, Numbeo.com cost of living survey for 2011 were conducted by 6628 independent contributors. The most expensive cities (excluding rent) are Oslo and Stavanger in Norway, followed by Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland. The least expensive are Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai in India.

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. Sydney (Australia) scores 113.14 points and is nearly three times as costly as La Paz (Bolivia) with an index score of 39.00.

In the beginning of 2011, most expensive cities (excluding rent) are :
- Oslo, Norway (CPI 149.26)
- Stavanger, Norway (145.65)
- Zurich, Switzerland (143.93)
- Geneva, Switzerland (143.71)
- Bergen, Norway (142.46)
- Basel, Switzerland (141.12)
- Lausanne, Switzerland (136.41)
- Lucerne, Switzerland (133.04)
- Perth, Australia (130.15)
- Copenhagen, Denmark (123.87)

The least expensive cities in 2011 are Indian cities : Coimbatore, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad, followed by Islamabad and Karachi in Pakistan.

Rent is most expensive in New York , followed by San Francisco (USA), Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and Lucerne (Switzerland).

Cities with the lowest rent are Changchun (China) and Karachi (Pakistan).

On country level the most expensive countries in 2011 are Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Australia, Ireland and Netherlands.

The least expensive countries in 2011 are India, Pakistan, Bolivia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, and Macedonia.

For complete rankings please visit http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp

Options for Economy Trends in 2011

The Economist magazine brought an interesting article titled with : “Betting big on bonds“ – an economist advises investors to expect deflation” http://www.economist.com/node/17853304,

A paragraph which provokes thinking: “Debt ratios, relative to GDP, are so high that it seems unlikely that most developed economies can grow their way out of the mess. That leaves the unappealing options of default, Japanese-style stagnation or rapid inflation to erode the real value of the debt burden.”

Debt of developed countries looks bad. If investors stop covering that debt, the country has an option to default. Usually better option is inflationary mechanism– printing money to cover debt. If the inflation rate is higher than interest rate of government bonds, it is not in favor of investors to buy government bonds. Some investors might still buy government bonds even if interest rate is below inflation since it is considered as low risk investment. They do so to diversify their portfolios.

At the other way, modern global economy is highly competitive which by itself deflatory process. If you can produce a good or make service cheaper, most likely you’ll sell much better than competitors. It was obvious in expansion of big supermarkets (so called hypermarkets). They provided goods cheaper than competitors. Modern economy is deflatory – market wants cheaper goods.

So the market does deflatory mechanism and government does inflatory mechanism.

So which is most likely future? Inflation? Deflation?

Possibilities:

Defaults of governments and financial institution – this will most likely happen unless government is printing money, since printing money is better for a country than default, countries will print money

Japanese style stagnation –real estate, stock and general market deflatory mechanism combined with no government default, slow money printing machine and investors preferring government bonds in spite of insane debt to GDP ratio

Rapid inflation - sounds like a real possibilities unless certain types of assets are over valuated.

If certain types of assets are over valuated as housing, it brings unprofitability to many financial and insurance institutions and in general brings stock value down. In the other way, price of commodities goes up due to money printing mechanism and overvaluation of other assets… isn’t it what is happening now? Isn’t the price of housing going down and the price of commodities going up? Isn’t the price of stocks bind to housing going down as well? Which trends do you predict in 2011?

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?