BCIS response

It includes reports on the cost/m2 of a range of typical buildings as well as a range of resource costs. There are also sections on trends in demand, prices, costs and labour availability for China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

To reflect the relative cost of building within a country, for those countries where we had the data, we have produced an 'affordability index' based on relating the cost of building to the cost of unleaded petrol (see below). We have used the ratio of average building costs/m2 to the cost of a litre of petrol. The table shows the average costs/m2 of building expressed as litres of petrol and the affordability index relative to Hong Kong.

The first three countries we analysed were Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia and we were amazed by the consistency in the results. It was probably about this time that QS News popped in for a coffee! Eventually we did the analysis for Sri Lanka and Japan, which rather ruined the picture.

As the item in QS News pointed out there is no obvious causal connection, but there is a central tendency to the figures, however it is the relative cost of building within a country that we are trying to reflect.

The figures for the UK show building costs/m2 relating to about 1,200 litres of petrol, which suggests that building here is quite expensive.