
Collaborative international cost-of-living index - hammadfauz
http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living
======
kator
Would be nice to take into consideration Sales Tax, Income Tax and Property
Taxes. In the states it can be fairly misleading if you ignore these factors
as some states have no personal income tax as an example and others have crazy
sales tax and personal income tax combined with property tax. All these drain
a persons resources when they move from one locale to another.

Not sure how to capture "soft" stuff like health care and/or vacation etc. I
recently was surprised to learn the in New York an employer doesn't have to
pay out unused vacation where as in other states they have to by law. This
sort of stuff can certainly catch someone off guard when leaving a job to
relocate.

Otherwise it's a very cool concept...

~~~
Spooky23
Yeah some of the big states are fun.

I'm in NY, my property taxes are about 60% of my mortgage payment.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
High property tax rate? High appreciation on your property? Or small mortgage?

~~~
Spooky23
Total property tax rate (school + city) is between 2.7 and 3 percent,
depending on valuation. I live in an area with fairly moderate swings in
valuation.

In small cities like mine, it's killing the housing stock, as taxes are
increasing faster than wages, and people are deferring maintenance.

------
carbeewo
This looks very similar to [http://www.numbeo.com](http://www.numbeo.com)
which was also created in 2009. Is it the same data?

~~~
pisarzp
What is more, Numbeo seems to be more exhaustive.

Expatistan has only 1 accomodation data point (Monthly rent for 85 m2 (900
Sqft) furnished accommodation in EXPENSIVE area) while Numbeo give me
information about different size apartments in and out of city center

~~~
pardo
Yes, currently we have only one accommodation type.

We started collecting prices for different ones a while ago. We are now
reaching the point where we already have enough data to include the new types
of housing in the public index.

------
OrwellianChild
This data is either hiding inputs or weighting the outputs inaccurately... I
looked at an example of moving to Vancouver, BC from Seattle, WA.

Housing was listed as 5% favorable to Vancouver.

The sub-elements listed were as follows:

    
    
                                                 Vancouver   Seattle   Variance
      Monthly rent for 85 m2 (900 Sqft)
      furnished accommodation in EXPENSIVE area     $2,301    $2,216        -4%
      Utilities 1 month (heating, electricity,
      gas ...) for 2 people in 85m2 flat               $85      $139        39%
      Internet 8MB (1 month)                           $39	     $47        17%
      40” flat screen TV                              $473      $537        12%
      Microwave, known brand, 800/900 Watt            $121      $116        -4%
      Laundry detergent (3 l. ~ 100 oz.)               $10        $8       -25%
      Hourly rate for cleaning help                    $23       $35        34%
    

Putting aside the fact that assets like a 40" TV are considered in "Housing
Cost of Living", the weighted average for these inputs should be 1.5%
favorable to Vancouver.

Take out the TV, detergent, and maid, and you're now 1% favorable to Seattle,
driven strongly by rent, obviously.

This is an interesting area of work, but I'd appreciate either full disclosure
of inputs and weighting or a much more simplified presentation (e.g. stand-
alone rental rates).

~~~
YZF
I think the sum would be of more interest than a weighted average. The
specific comparison between Vancouver and Seattle is almost meaningless for
various reasons:

\- Nobody rents furnished accommodation in Vancouver, BC. It's almost unheard
of.

\- You can buy your TV across the border and bring it over (same for
microwave).

\- Food will generally be more expensive in Vancouver.

\- Gas will be more expensive in Vancouver.

\- If you buy a house here expect to pay a lot more in Vancouver for a
comparable property.

\- Taxes are higher (though you do get services in return).

EDIT: As someone who is pretty familiar with both areas I would expect it to
be cheaper to live in the Greater Seattle area vs. the Greater Vancouver area.
There's a lot of YMMV though.

------
yitchelle
Will data collected be opened for other to use/analyse/exploit?

~~~
pardo
At the moment I have no plans to open the data completely.

I do sometimes share the data with particular projects or developers on a
case-by-case basis. If you are thinking about using the data for something
interesting, you can contact me through the website.

~~~
aw3c2
Why not open it in a open data spirit to anyone so incentivise curious people
can create nice analysis whenever they feel like it?

~~~
patio11
This will result in people attempting to outcompete his site using
functionally the same business model and UX but superior SEO. c.f.
StackOverflow clones.

~~~
yitchelle
He could charge for the usage of the data.

------
eightofdiamonds
You do get some strange differences. For example I compared Cincinnati to
Savannah Georgia. It says a TV costs 2x as much in Savannah and that a $129
microwave in Cincinnati costs $500 in Savannah. Odd numbers like this throw
off the total.

------
chevreuil
Main economic institutions [1] already maintains databases of consumer goods
and services price across countries, but they don't give easy access to the
raw data. Glad to see Expatistan filling this gap.

[1] International Comparison Program for the Worldbank
([http://icp.worldbank.org/](http://icp.worldbank.org/)), Eurostats
([http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....](http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Comparative_price_levels_of_consumer_goods_and_services))

~~~
pardo
Yes, there are a number of international institutions collecting this data,
and almost every single national statistical office collect price data
regularly. Sadly, they tend not to make the raw data available.

~~~
jnbiche
>Yes, there are a number of international institutions collecting this data,
and almost every single national statistical office collect price data
regularly. Sadly, they tend not to make the raw data available.

And so you start up a project to change that....and then don't make the raw
data available? I'm confused.

------
ovulator
I'm not sure where they got their data from, but one thing stood out to me.

I compared the price from Vancouver BC to Seattle WA and was surprised to say
that food was cheaper in Vancouver, as Vancouverites are always coming south
of the border to buy their groceries. Especially milk, which they load up on
by the cart full. On this site though it says a liter of milk in Vancouver is
$1.65 and a litre in the US is $2.90, a GALLON in the US can be bought for
less than $2.90.

So I'm a little suspect of the data.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
I see this in the recent comparison list. Very suspect.

 _Cost of living in London is 16% more expensive than in New York City

_ Cost of living in New York City is 14% cheaper than in London

~~~
jedmeyers
What seems to be the problem here?

120 is 20% higher than 100

100 is 16.(6)% lower than 120

------
marianminds
I've used numbeo before and I had a look at this, comparing about 10 or so
different cities. The format and function is pretty much the same and I use
them both for the same purpose -- a simple comparison of aggregate data on
different cities using the same metric. I moved to Rome a year ago and in
another year I'll be moving to some German-speaking country, so I'm comparing
different cities now. It's not important to me whether the rental estimates
are 100% correct or slightly high/low, what's important is that the data is
collected the same way for both cities under comparison. I want a broader view
to narrow the search, and then I will go elsewhere to get more accurate info
-- apartment searches in the respective cities, for example. If you get enough
data from varied enough sources to minimise biases (e.g. expats might live in
the more expensive parts of the city and not know the local tricks, or most of
your contributors might only be from a certain subset of expats) then I don't
need to know the comparison of a hundred different types of little things
because I can get more exact information elsewhere. What I'd recommend doing
instead of narrowing your data selection is to actually broaden the scope of
your comparison -- compare aggregated measures of quality of life, average
temperatures/rainfall, hours of sunlight per day, number of bars or gyms per
capita, etc. If I know what city I'm looking at, I can easily find a list of
apartments for rent and get direct information that way. What I can't do as
easily is compare the general perspective of life satisfaction or public
transport penetration, crime stats, etc.

------
tudorconstantin
(Shameless plug) I wrote this blog post in october, based on numbers from
numbeo: [http://programming.tudorconstantin.com/2013/10/why-ill-
never...](http://programming.tudorconstantin.com/2013/10/why-ill-never-leave-
romania-as-software.html)

I treated the subject of quality of life from the subjective perspective of a
software developer (big salary in a country with small income - the average
net income in romania is around 400 eur)

------
nawitus
It would be even better if you could input what you spend your money on. E.g.
if someone buys a lot of alcohol, then the cost of living depends more on the
alcohol tax.

~~~
netcan
I think this might be a hopeless exercise, since the things you spend money on
are often dependent on where you live. If you live in London vs San Francisco
you will eat differently, dress differently and spend your time doing
different things.

------
whybroke
Wherever numbeo and expatistan get their data, it's utterly hilarious that the
summaries rank San Jose CA about the same as Valanecia/Alicante Spain.

Let me just say, there is an absolutely ludicrous error somewhere.

~~~
leccine
Yes, in your interpretation what that data means.

~~~
whybroke
Just a quick glance at craigslist for 1000sq foot rental in San Jose, CA shows
that expatistan's "expensive price" is below average. While the Valencia Spain
rental price is higher than any I have ever seen personally.

Likewise Spanish food prices are inflated on those sites which you can confirm
by looking at mercadona.es which is a mid-high end grocery store in Spain.

But mostly: Valencia and Alicante have huge populations of retired working
class British people. There is no way on this earth a retired working class
British person could survive in San Jose let alone thrive.

------
hammock
Can this be repurposed as an independent price index/measure of inflation?
That is, independent of the World Bank/governments and government-funded
economic bodies, which could be useful

~~~
_delirium
This seems to be deliberately targeting "expat prices", which can often
diverge significantly from the local cost of living. For example the price for
a furnished month-to-month-rent corporate apartment lease does not necessarily
track the regular housing market. It might be useful for something, but I
would be careful about using expat lifestyles to generalize about a region's
economy.

------
andrechile
For Santiago, Chile I can confirm that prices are VERY accurate - Entered and
researched about 10 price points before I found where I can actually find the
list - amazing site - THANKS

------
rmc
Once again asking about "expats", which just means "rich immigrant". You could
get totally different answers if you were asking for "main immigrant part of
$CITY". The survey to collect data even says "Do not enter prices that can
only be found .. in [e]specially cheap neighborhoods", which usually means
"immigrant".

~~~
jpatokal
Rich expats are pretty much by definition not "immigrants", they're usually
visiting for a few years with a fat "expat package" courtesy of the company.
But these are increasingly a dying breed, and most expats are neither fat cat
expats nor dirt-poor refugees, but somewhere in the middle.

Also, much of the calculator asks for things like a liter of gas or a bottle
of Coke, whose price is not going change radically no matter where you shop.

~~~
rmc
_Also, much of the calculator asks for things like a liter of gas or a bottle
of Coke, whose price is not going change radically no matter where you shop._

Not necessarily. There is a Big Mac Index[1], that looks at the price of a Big
Mac from McDonalds, which shows that the price of a very standard product (a
Big Mac) can vary by location.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index)

------
goshx
I don't think this can be used to compare moving abroad to countries that
don't have USD as their currency. For instance, when comparing a Brazilian
city to a US city it simply converts the Brazilian prices to dollars, which is
not the right way, IMHO. People in Brazil don't make the same amount of money
and they don't get paid in dollars.

------
JoshTriplett
It doesn't make sense to have a single category for "utilities", as those vary
dramatically by usage; that would be like asking for the price of "a tank of
gas", or gas usage per week/month. It would make more sense to separate out
electricity rates, water/sewer rates, natural gas rates, and so on.

------
minusSeven
Damn Cost of living of Indian cities are f---- cheap. Had a hard time finding
cities outside India cheaper than inside India. The lowest I came to was
Kolkata the cheapest in India. Even many African cites(like Nairobi) were more
expensive than Indian ones. Wonder how much the data is accurate.

~~~
known
Because 80% Indians are wage slaves
[https://en.w.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_caste](https://en.w.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_caste)

------
72deluxe
Crazy. London is more expensive to live in than New York. Crazy.

New York is portrayed in films as somewhere great to go, whereas they always
portray London as dreary, and it is always raining. (London is alright to
visit, but by the way).

------
userbinator
I first read the title as (crowd sourced cost) of (living database) and
wondered what the latter was - a database you have to feed? Turns out to be
not so far from what the site does...

------
microcolonel
Would be nice to be able to turn off specific items, for example house
cleaning is a service I've never needed, and probably never will need.

------
VolatileVoid
You're comparing cost of living without taking into account median salaries?

I don't think any comparison is complete without some sort of salary survey.

~~~
pardo
I get this comment a lot. I agree that it makes sense to compare also local
salaries to see which city is the cheapest one to live in as an employee.

However, Expatistan is not about finding cheap cities to work in. It's about
comparing cost-of-living, independently of your income. Expats are usually not
linked to average local salaries in any meaningful way, anyway.

I explain it much better in the website:
[http://www.expatistan.com/faq#average-
salary](http://www.expatistan.com/faq#average-salary)

~~~
hjnilsson
While actual salary might not be interesting, how much taxes will affect your
gross income is. Tax rules are often very convulted. If you collected gross
salary and received salary after taxes numbers, that'd be a great resource.
I've moved abroad and all you get usually is vague statements about tax
pressure (ie. asking a range of people you get wildly different answers).
Often this is related to your income level in non-obvious ways as well. A
table for each city with mapping from gross income -> income after tax would
be very helpful.

------
aw3c2
Not available under a free license, no thanks.

------
fiatjaf
Historical data! We want historical inflation data!

~~~
leccine
That would be a killer feature. We could prove that the price increase in SF
is insane.

------
beachstartup
santa monica, ca doesn't exist in their database.

and looks like "los angeles" is too large to have accurate numbers.

------
a_c
I think the comparison would make more sense if it is a function of salary,
not just an absolute number

------
freshyill
This is OK if I want to move from one major city to another, but not for much
else. If I, for example, wanted to move to a smaller city two hours away and
work remotely most of the time, it's not going to be of much use. This fun to
play with, but is it really useful?

------
Thiz
Looking at those prices I can see inflation in US has been 100% in the last
ten years and will be much more in the next years thanks to QE and the FED
printing fetish.

Inflation is theft.

