San Francisco has surpassed New York to become the priciest region for new constructions. The average building cost is currently about $4480/m² and data shows that it will grow by 6% this year. At the same time, the average building cost in New York is $3900/m² and will probably rise by 3% this year. The 3 cities that follow San Francisco and New York in the list are London, Zurich and Hong Kong.

The study was carried out by Turner & Townsend company and investigated the cost of 6 types of buildings including office blocks, apartments, hospitals, schools, large warehouse distribution centers and shopping malls. Recently, the costs of beams and reinforcement bars in San Francisco have increased by 30% and 17%, respectively. Moreover, there is a shortage in construction workers as high housing pricing has forced most of them to live in a long distance from the construction zones.

Despite it's no longer the most expensive city to build, New York still provides the highest labor costs in the U.S. with an average of $101.30/h. In this field, New York comes second worldwide after Zurich which has an average payment of $110.7/h. San Francisco's labor cost is about $90/h. 

But, the study shows that there is severe inequality between the labor cost worldwide. Most Asian and Africa countries have the lowest costs while North America has the highest costs.

Sources: Therealdeal.com Bizjournals.com