“There are three things that matter in property: location, location, location”

Those are words from Harold Samuel, a British real-estate mogul from the 1900s. Broadly speaking, it’s a quote that still holds true—property values in the world’s best cities have always been worth a pretty penny. Of course, certain cities simply hold more appeal for wealthy people, and as a result, competition in the prime real estate market can be fierce.

The scarcity of real estate is driven by trends such as urbanization — the migration of people into cities. While the first examples of cities were built thousands of years ago, it was only recently that the majority of the population began to live in them. In fact, the urban population just overtook the rural population for the first time in 2007. To learn more about the sky-high cost of prime property in cities, the infographic on the opposite page visualizes data from Knight Frank’s Prime International Residential Index (PIRI 100).

What’s a Million Dollars Good For? The following table lists the number of square feet that you could buy with one million dollars in various cities. There are more cities on this list than in the graphic to create a more