• Monaco is the world's most expensive place to buy luxury housing.
• The 2025 Knight Frank Wealth Report says $1 million buys just 205 sq ft of prime residential property.
• The tax haven is tiny and densely populated, so there's very little space to build on.

A million dollars will only buy you about as much space as a parking spot in Monaco.

That's according to this year's Knight Frank Wealth Report, which found that $1 million will buy just 19 square meters, or about 205 square feet, of prime residential property in the microstate on the French Riviera.

In comparison, the same amount would get you 34 square meters (about 366 square feet) in New York — the world's sixth most-expensive market for luxury real estate.

Hong Kong is ranked second, followed by Singapore, Geneva, and London.

Monaco remains a magnet for the superrich due to its lack of income or capital gains taxes, along with its favorable climate and high-quality healthcare.

However, housing costs are exceptionally high. Monaco was also the world's most expensive luxury rental market last year.

A Knight Frank analysis from May 2024 found that renting a 1,100-square-foot property in Monaco starts at about $19,350 a month. A $30,000 budget would likely only stretch to a modest two-bedroom apartment.

Monaco's extreme property prices are driven by a lack of space to build more properties, resulting in a limited housing supply.

At just 510 acres, Monaco is the world's second-smallest sovereign state after the Vatican City.

For perspective, the constitutional monarchy is smaller than New York's Central Park, which covers 843 acres, while the entire city spans about 200,000 acres.

According to the latest World Bank data, Monaco is also the most densely populated country, with 18,681 people per square kilometer.

To address the space constraints, Monaco has been reclaiming land from the sea for decades. In 2019, Savills said it was investing more than $2 billion to extend Monaco's coastline by a further 15 acres, creating homes for about 1,000 people.

• A Knight Frank report said that almost 40% of all individuals worth more than $10 million live in the USA.
• Over 900,000 people in the US have a net worth in excess of $10 million, Knight Frank said.
• The US also leads the world in terms of billionaires and overall wealth, the report showed.

More of the superrich live in the US than in any other country.

According to the 2025 Wealth Report by Knight Frank, a London-headquartered global real estate consultancy, 39% of the world's individuals with net worths of $10 million or higher are based in the US. In total, 905,413 such individuals live in the US.

This is almost twice the number in China, which has 471,634. There are 122,119 people worth over $10 million living in Japan. The fourth highest on the list is India, with 85,698.

"Despite our forecast that Asia will outpace North America in wealth creation over the next four years, there is no realistic challenge to US dominance," authors of the paper said.

In the bracket of people worth $100 million and over, more than 40% live in the US.

"While the global economy slowed through 2024, the resilience of the US helped prop up investor confidence," Liam Bailey, global head of research at Knight Frank, said.

"The trends powering wealth creation, including growth in financial markets led by equity markets and the bitcoin run, continued through 2024. And despite geopolitical tensions, resilient global trade further contributed to growth," he added.

Patrick Gower, a researcher at Knight Frank, said a good year for the rich came from a combination of factors, including big bets on risk assets like cryptocurrencies, the S&P 500 rising over 20% for the second year in a row, bitcoin soaring 120%, and President Donald Trump's pledge to loosen regulatory standards.

The US also dominated for its billionaire population, containing 30% of global billionaires and 40% of overall billionaire wealth, Knight Frank said.

$5.7 trillion of billionaire wealth, a 10-year high, is held in the US, the report said. China, by contrast, has seen a 10% decline in its share of billionaire wealth.

In terms of the professions where billionaires are created, finance and investment lead for the overall number of billionaires, but tech leads in relation to total wealth.

On Bloomberg's widely watched Billionaires Index, eight of the world's 10 richest people — such as Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg — made their fortunes through tech.

The average age of a billionaire was 65.7 in 2024, Knight Frank's report said.

87% of billionaires are male. However, last year, 82% of new billionaires were men, down from 90% four years ago. Almost half of the billionaires under 30 were women in 2024.