The ranking measures property prices, but not whether local residents can realistically afford them.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
Zurich is Europe’s most expensive city for buying a centrally located apartment, with an estimated price of €22,910 per square metre. Geneva follows at €19,439, while London ranks third at €17,241. At those prices, an 80-square-metre apartment would cost approximately €1.83 million in Zurich, €1.56 million in Geneva and €1.38 million in London.
The figures come from Deutsche Bank’s Mapping the World’s Prices 2026 report, which compared city-centre apartment prices across 69 global cities, including 28 in Europe. The calculations use information from Numbeo and Deutsche Bank, converted into euros using average European Central Bank exchange rates for the first half of the year.
Paris occupies fourth place at €12,771 per square metre, making central London approximately 35 percent more expensive than the French capital. Vienna completes the European top five at €12,483. Munich is Germany’s most expensive city at €11,435, followed in the ranking by Luxembourg, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo. Three Nordic capitals therefore appear among Europe’s ten costliest urban property markets.
Prague, at €8,352 per square metre, is more expensive than Madrid at €7,831 and Berlin at €7,613. Rome, Dublin and Frankfurt also exceed €7,000, while Lisbon and Barcelona remain above €6,000. The simple average across the 28 European cities is €9,090 per square metre, equivalent to approximately €727,000 for an 80-square-metre apartment.
Istanbul is the least expensive European city included, at €2,646 per square metre, followed by Athens at €3,442. Brussels is third from the bottom at €4,380, despite serving as the European Union’s principal institutional centre. Lower absolute prices, however, do not necessarily indicate greater accessibility when wages, mortgage rates, taxes and household purchasing power are considered.
The ranking captures the market price of urban property rather than the complete burden of home ownership. It does not measure how many years of local income buyers would need, whether apartments are available in sufficient numbers or how financing conditions differ between countries. Europe’s housing divide is therefore not simply between expensive and inexpensive cities, but between markets where housing functions as shelter and those where it increasingly operates as a scarce investment asset.
La verdad es estructura, no ruido. / Truth is structure, not noise.