ICMSCosts reviews cost data for major cities – but how real are the numbers?

Will Myles, 4 years ago in Thought leadership

ICMSCosts has carried out a comparison of the average new-build construction costs in major cities around the world.  The aim of the exercise was to determine the extent to which this information could be relied on for benchmarking and initial investment decision-making.

The comparison draws on relevant publicly available (non-ICMSCosts) information across various real estate asset types, from the last three years.  The table below highlights the results across five major cities:

Asset type (US$/m2 IPMS 1)	New York City	London	Sydney	Singapore	Dubai
Car parks – below-ground	2,150	1,750	1,250	1,250	900
Car parks – multi-storey	1,500	900	900	850	750
Educational (schools)	4,350	2,950	2,350	1,700	1,650
Hospitals (general)	7,500	4,750	5,700	3,300	3,050
Hotels – local – below 4-star	3,550	3,200	2,850	2,500	1,850
Hotels – international 5-star	5,600	5,300	4,400	3,350	3,000
Offices – high-rise – high-quality	6,350	5,200	5,400	2,450	1,950
Residential – high-rise – medium quality	4,150	4,550	3,350	1,950	1,750
Residential – houses – detached	2,600	2,800	1,550	2,450	1,600
Retail – malls – high-end	4,150	4,050	3,350	2,700	1,600
Warehouses	1,650	1,100	800	1,250	800
ICMSCosts location factor index  (London = 100)	121	100	88	68	56

 

The average costs quoted draw on thousands of reference data points from dozens of sources.  The location factor data is drawn from an even broader basket of asset types than those indicated.

However, while it may be tempting to treat such a wide-ranging databank as reliable, ICMSCosts would advise against it because critical information such as asset attributes, the scope of costs, timing and exchange rates are not clear.  The data should be treated with caution and not relied on for investment decisions nor used for comparisons between projects.

And this is where the real work of ICMSCosts comes in, giving clients complete transparency over their cost data.  The ICMSCosts database is being developed jointly with client organisations based on ICMS, the international standard for cost reporting.

ICMSCosts is creating a global, independent database of asset lifecycle costs for real estate and infrastructure.  We support client organisations with real data from real projects, enabling better decision-making and, ultimately, saving taxpayers or shareholders money.

If you would like to know more about ICMSCosts and how we can enable better access to better data, drop us a note at info@icmscosts.com.