Monaco, Geneva, Singapore top list of cities with ultra-wealthy residents

Two city-states, Monaco and Singapore, as well as Geneva, Switzerland, claimed the top three spots in a ranking of the world’s highly-concentrated cities for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, according to a report Thursday by Wealth X, a global wealth information provider.

In Monaco, one out of every 56 people is ultra-high net worth, those whose assets are worth at least US$30 million, the highest density out of the 30 global cities ranked in The Wealth-X City Residential Index 2017.

Geneva, the global hub for banking and diplomacy, came in second. With an estimated population of 490,000, it has one ultra-high net worth individual out of every 221 residents. There are 210 ultra-high net worth residents who live primarily in the city, in addition to the 2,005 people who own second homes there.

Meanwhile, Singapore has one super-rich resident living among every 707 people.More: When Do I Have to Start Paying Taxes on a Condo That’s Still Being Built?The index takes into consideration all residential addresses of the ultra-wealthy, discounting their official residence or country of origin.

New York City still has highest concentration of the ultra-wealthy, overall. A total of 14,574 world’s super-rich have their primary homes and/or vacation homes in the Big Apple.

London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Singapore and San Francisco are ranked second to sixth in the overall concentration of the ultra wealthy. Despite a recent surge in the number of billionaires, India’s New Delhi and Mumbai occupied the bottom two spots in the concentration index, according to Mansion Global.

The index estimates population, wealth, and investable assets for the world’s major cities as ranked by nominal GDP in US dollars. These cities are defined on the basis of urban agglomerations (UAs) and metropolitan (metro) areas, which include the built-up areas outside the administrative core. We consider metro and urban areas more representative than administrative cores (city proper) because more residents are likely to work and spend within the metro/UA boundaries. Globally comparable city-level data is not available.  To ensure comparability is as precise as possible, we source all metro- and urban-level population and GDP data from Oxford Economics.

All known residences of the UHNWI population are counted. This includes where an individual has a residential address in a different location to the primary business address.

This sample is then used to extrapolate from the Wealth-X model estimates of counts by city, as these counts include only those cases where business and residential addresses are collocated. From this, we arrive at the residential ‘second home’ footprint. The UHNW Total Footprint combines both groups.

Thirty cities and towns globally are examined. The top five cities in the United States, Europe, and Asia-Pacific are ranked by overall UHNWI population, and the concentration of UHNW per capita gives a secondary measure of UHNW density.

Most geographic analyses of the UHNWI population use the primary business, or “primary” residential address, as a sole indicator to categorize the geographic breakdown of the individuals. While this approach provides an accurate assessment of population, it does not account for the fact that ultra-wealthy individuals often have multiple homes and business interests in multiple locations.

In a departure from our traditional methodology, the City Residential Index is designed to include all residential addresses of ultra-wealthy individuals. This is intended to measure the UHNW presence in cities globally, without prejudice to double-counting, determinations of primary residence, or whether the individual is an official resident of that country.

The City Residential Index sheds light on the global regions most popular with UHNW real estate investors. The report also reveals the potential opportunity for organizations to engage with UHNW customers and donors in these locations.

This rationale assumes that any residential footprint, even if only for days or weeks in any given year, provides insight into where the ultra-wealthy invest, prefer to spend their time, and can be effectively engaged.