The bull market in hot urban retail and commercial real estate markets lasted for pretty much the entire post-crisis recovery period. But COVID has turned things around, and as people flee to the suburbs, it’s worth taking a look at how valuations have declined.

While urban real-estate markets have taken a hit as people flee to the suburbs and more space, it’s worth taking a look at how much space costs in different cities around the world. While foreign cities are of course cheaper than the top American metropolises, the numbers in some cases might surprise you.

The median American home price, which is roughly $300,000, can buy a whopping 2,100 square feet in Houston, and nearly 1.5x that in Johannesburg. But in San Francisco and Singapore, that number buys just 300 square feet.

• The median U.S. home price, $300,000, buys almost 5,000 square feet in Delhi, but only 144 square feet in Hong Kong.
• Looking at the two extremes in America, homebuyers in Houston could get seven times more space compared to their fellow house-hunters in San Francisco.
• In Canada, Ottawa offers the most space for $300,000, while Lisbon, Portugal would be a buyer’s best bet of all the European cities included in the analysis.

Hong Kong’s infamously tiny apartments are probably not the ideal place for riding out a pandemic. But that’s why the city’s real estate market has taken such a hit (well, at least that’s one reason).

In the US, Houston appears to be the city that offers the best value, as buyers get the highest ratio of square footage per dollar. With the added bonus of living in one of America’s largest and most economically vital cities.

As the formerly city-loving millennial generation sets its sights on the suburbs, and young adults who have fallen on hard times move back in with their middle-class parents, is it possible that cities like NYC could see the economic progress of the last 30 years slip away? Crime is already rising at an alarming rate, and not only in New York.