There is no defensible, like-for-like global ranking of the eight most expensive countries to buy a house in the available comparisons. The closest useful evidence measures different things: main-city residential prices, new-build bids in surveyed European markets, or apartment prices outside city centres. Those figures can show where selected markets are costly, but they cannot be combined into a reliable national house-price top eight.
That distinction matters for buyers: a city price per square metre is not a countrywide house price, and an expensive market is not necessarily the least affordable one for local households.
Why a reliable global top eight is not established
“Most expensive” can mean the highest total purchase price, the highest price per square metre, or the highest cost relative to local incomes. These are different rankings. Even a price-per-square-metre comparison is only meaningful when geography, property type, price basis, currency, and observation date are reasonably aligned.
The available sources do not provide eight comparable countrywide prices for houses. Global Property Guide’s comparison is organized around prices per square metre in a country’s main city, and its country entries can differ in property type and whether the figure reflects asking prices, sales, or estimates. Deloitte’s 2025 comparison covers average bid prices for newly built homes in surveyed European markets. Numbeo’s country measure is for apartments outside city centres, not houses. None supports presenting a definitive worldwide top eight of national house prices.
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What the available comparisons show
Main-city residential prices
Global Property Guide’s Q2 2026 table includes Vienna, Austria, at €7,965 per square metre. This is a main-city observation, not an Austrian national average or a price for every kind of home. The publisher says its figures draw on government sources, statistics offices, and local property portals, and warns that property types and price bases vary. Its displayed currency conversions can also be affected by exchange rates. See the Global Property Guide country and city comparison and check the notes for the relevant entry before comparing it with another market.
New-build bids in Deloitte’s European comparison
Deloitte’s 14th Property Index, published in August 2025, reports average bid prices for newly built homes of €8,760 per square metre in Switzerland and €6,131 per square metre in Israel. Deloitte says Switzerland overtook the previous year’s leader, Israel. These are figures for new-build bids in the report’s covered European comparison—not verified averages for all homes sold across either country, and not a worldwide top-eight ranking. The report is available as Deloitte’s 2025 Property Index.
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Apartment prices outside city centres
Numbeo publishes a country-level price-per-square-metre measure for buying an apartment outside the centre. Its page says the figures draw on contributor data and official sources, and that it displays countries with sufficient contributor counts. The page showed an update date of April 30, 2026. This can offer a separate perspective on apartment costs, but it is not a house-price series and should not be ranked alongside city-centre or new-build figures as if they measured the same market. See Numbeo’s apartment-price comparison.
How to read a country price comparison
Before treating a figure as evidence that one country is more expensive than another, identify what the number actually represents:
- Geography: Is it a national average, a capital or main city, or a non-central area?
- Property: Is it an apartment or a house, a new build or resale, and a primary or secondary-market property?
- Price basis: Does it report asking or bid prices, completed transactions, or an estimate?
- Unit and currency: Is the price per square metre or a whole-home price, and has a local-currency value been converted? Exchange-rate movements can change a converted figure even when local prices have not changed.
- Date: When was the observation collected, and what period does it describe? Sources update on different schedules.
Global Property Guide cautions that these differences affect comparisons; its quarterly data are drawn from sources whose publication schedules vary. An apparent gap between two displayed figures may therefore reflect differences in the underlying measure as well as differences in market prices.
High prices do not automatically mean low affordability
An absolute price ranking says little about how manageable a purchase is for a typical household in that market. The OECD separates nominal and real house-price indices from affordability indicators such as price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios. It defines the price-to-income ratio as “the nominal house price index divided by the nominal disposable income per head” and says it “can be considered as a measure of the affordability of housing.” The OECD’s price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios are indices with 2015 as the base year, not currency-denominated prices per square metre. See the OECD housing-price indicators.
For a buyer comparing places to live, use local income and financing context alongside purchase prices. A costly home in absolute terms may be more attainable relative to local incomes than a cheaper home in a lower-income market; price-to-income and price-to-rent measures address a different question from nominal price rankings.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What a buyer can reasonably conclude
The evidence supports selected, carefully scoped observations—not a ranked list of eight countries. Vienna is a high-priced main-city observation in Global Property Guide’s Q2 2026 table; Switzerland and Israel have high new-build bid prices in Deloitte’s 2025 European comparison; and Numbeo offers a distinct measure for apartments outside city centres. These measures should remain separate unless a comparison aligns their definitions and coverage.
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To assess a specific purchase, compare homes in the same location and property category, verify whether prices are asking or completed-sale figures, and consider affordability relative to local income. A national label alone cannot tell you what a buyer will pay in a particular city or for a particular home.
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