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Lausanne cracks top ten list of expensive cities

Sophie Inge
Sophie Inge - [email protected]
Lausanne cracks top ten list of expensive cities
Lausanne: almost as expensive as Geneva and Zurich. Photo: Davide Restivo

Residents and visitors to Lausanne are often heard complaining of the city’s unaffordable prices — and they wouldn’t be wrong. According to a new survey, the city joins Geneva and Zurich among the ten most expensive in the world.

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Lausanne is the sixth most expensive city in the world, according to Expatistan’s annual Cost of Living Index.

Geneva and Zurich, habitually featuring at the top of such lists, ranked third and fourth respectively.

As well as welcoming Lausanne into this year’s top ten, the ranking had some other surprises in store, with London usurping Oslo as the most expensive city in the world.

Also in this year’s top ten were New York City in fifth place, Singapore in seventh place, Paris in eighth place, San Francisco in ninth place and Copenhagen in tenth place. 

According to the survey, which analyzed prices of items ranging from fast-food to accommodation prices, eggs in Lausanne cost a whopping 225 percent more than they would in Moscow.

SEE ALSO: Texan expat champions hilly Lausanne

Meanwhile chicken costs 162 percent more than in Tokyo.

The results of this year’s ranking came as no surprise to Lausanne-based French expat David Talerman, who is the author of “Vivre et travailler en Suisse” (Living and Working in Switzerland).

Speaking to the 20 Minutes newspaper, he described the cost of living in Lausanne as a “real hold-up” for the vast majority of expats who are not rolling in money.

He said the heaviest costs were for rent, food and telecommunications.

According to the author, this year’s surprising results can be partly explained by the fact that some towns are not included in the traditional statistics provided by UBS which analyze just 73 towns compared to 4,000 in the Expatistan survey.

See below for the top ten ranking:

1 London (United Kingdom)

2 Oslo (Norway)

3 Geneva (Switzerland)

4 Zurich (Switzerland)

5 New York City (United States)

6 Lausanne (Switzerland)

7 Singapore (Singapore)

8 Paris (France)

9 San Francisco (United States)

10 Copenhagen (Denmark) 

For the full Index click here.

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