House prices in Sydney are dominating real estate discussions at the moment, but when it comes to luxury homes Australia’s biggest city is not at the top of the price list.

According to Luxury Defined, an annual report put together form prestige real estate firm Christie’s International, Sydney has only the fifth highest priced luxury residential properties in the world.

According to Christie’s, buying a luxury home in Sydney will set you back at least US$4 million, but you would need more than US$8 million for a luxury home in Los Angeles, more than US$6 million in London and more than US$5 million in New York Hong Kong.

Christie’s claims the global average price for a luxury home is US$2 million.

Christie’s uses a formula of population size, number of high-net-worth residents, buyer types, home purchase type, housing mix, and general economic indicators to determine what classifies as a luxury home.

While it may be fifth when it comes to prices for luxury houses, Sydney is ranked fourth on Christie’s Luxury Index.

The Luxury Index uses six factors; market record sale price, average price per square foot of luxury properties, number of sales over $1 million, number of listings over $1 million per capita, percentage of international and non-local buyers and

percentage of secondary and additional homes to score a cities’ “luxuriousness” out of a possible 100.

Sydney scored 63 on the index, behind London (75), New York (71) and Hong Kong (70).

Sydney also performed strongly on Christie’s Luxury Temperature list, which aims to determine which cities have the hottest luxury property markets by looking at factors such as annual growth in the number of luxury home sales and average days on the market for luxury homes.

Sydney was determined to have the third hottest luxury market behind Toronto and San Francisco.