New York City has passed London to become the world’s second most expensive city to rent business and residential space.

International real estate advisor, Savills, ranked New York behind Hong Kong in its latest World Cities Review. Notably, it cited Singapore as the city that offers the best value accommodation in relation to the size of its economy.

Savills updated its ‘total accommodation cost’ measure of the top 10 world cities. While it has remained stable, falling approximately 0.05 per cent in the first half of 2013, the cost has risen in ‘old world’ cities and fallen in ‘new world’ ones.

This has made emerging and recently emerged markets increasingly competitive. Sydney, Australia, Shanghai, China, and Mumbai, India, offer the lowest total base business costs; Mumbai costs about a quarter of Hong Kong.

New York was the fifth most expensive city at the beginning of 2010. Its rise to second is a result of total costs increasing 19 per cent over the past five years. Though London has shown strong recovery since bottoming out in 2009, it slipped to third.