Dublin is the 14th most expensive of 20 global cities to live and work, according to the latest Live/Work Index, which measures the combined cost of residential and office rental per person per year.

 

Savills, the London commercial property agents, reports that the cost of living and working in Dublin has jumped by 11% since the start of the year while in dollar terms London has fallen by 11% following the decline in the value of sterling post the Brexit vote.

The annual cost of renting a home per person alongside the cost of office space per employee for a year in Dublin is now $45,147.20.

London’s total costs for one employee fell to $100,141 in July 2016 while commercial and residential property rental prices in New York rose from the start of 2016, pushing total accommodation costs 2% higher in H1 2016.

The total annual cost per employee of living and working accommodation in New York is now put at $114,010 by Savills World Research. Hong Kong is just ahead of London’s $100,141 at $100,984.

Savills says that the European cities have shown mostly modest rental growth in local currencies but the strengthening of the euro since December has made them slightly more expensive in dollar terms.

The exception is Dublin which has seen an overall live-work increase of 6% in euro terms, fuelled primarily by a big bounce in office rents from low post-financial crisis levels, and especially in the creative/tech sector. This compares to a 3% rent rise in Berlin and 1% in Paris.
Despite their small size, both Berlin and Dublin look very good value to businesses looking to locate within a large and prosperous economic region. Annual accommodation costs in these cities are among the lowest in the Savills live-work index and comparable to Mumbai and Lagos.

Dublin, cost livingBig foreign-owned companies can be sanguine about rising rents in Dublin but it's not good news for local startup firms. Dublin also lacks quality budget hotels and overnight rates now exceed the peaks of the bubble years of 2006 and 2007.

Pic above: The Samuel Beckett Bridge, was named after the Dubliner who won the Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 "for his writing, which — in new forms for the novel and drama — in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation."

The National Conference Centre is on the right of the image.