How much does a skyscraper cost?
There is no single price, and anyone who quotes one has left something out. The same tower is a different number in Manhattan and in Mumbai, and the land under either often costs more than the building on it.
The usable range
For the building itself in a developed market, construction runs roughly 300 to 1,000 US dollars per square foot of floor area at 2026 prices. The bottom of that band is a plain residential tower on an easy site with cheap labor; the top is an office building in Manhattan or Hong Kong with a complicated facade and union rates. A million square feet at the middle of the range is about 600 million dollars of construction.
Then add what the range leaves out. Land in a central business district can exceed the construction budget on its own, and in Manhattan it frequently does. Interest accrues through four to six years of building with no income, and design fees, permits, insurance and the developer's margin sit on top. Total development cost in an expensive city often lands at double the hard construction number.
What specific towers cost
| Building | Cost | Year | Height | What the figure covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrysler Building | $20 million | 1930 | 319 m | New York City, the tower, paid for largely by Walter Chrysler himself |
| Empire State Building | $41 million | 1931 | 381 m | New York City, the tower, land bought separately |
| Willis Tower | $175 million | 1973 | 442 m | Chicago, the tower, built for Sears as its own headquarters |
| Petronas Twin Towers | $1.6 billion | 1998 | 452 m | Kuala Lumpur, both towers and the podium under them |
| Burj Khalifa | $1.5 billion | 2010 | 828 m | Dubai, the tower alone; Downtown Dubai came to about $20 billion |
| One World Trade Center | $3.9 billion | 2014 | 541 m | New York City, the tower plus its share of the rebuilt site infrastructure |
| Shanghai Tower | $2.4 billion | 2015 | 632 m | Shanghai, the tower, a state-backed development |
The Empire State Building cost about 41 million dollars in 1931, roughly 800 million in today's money for 102 floors. It came in under budget because it went up during the Depression, when steel and labor were cheap.
One World Trade Center cost about 3.9 billion dollars by 2014, among the most expensive office buildings ever built, because its site came with a rebuilt transit hub, a memorial and extraordinary security work. The Burj Khalifa cost about 1.5 billion for the tower in 2010, less than people expect for the tallest building on earth, and about 20 billion for Downtown Dubai. The 20 billion is the figure usually printed next to the Burj Khalifa, and it is the district.
The Shard in London is quoted at about 1.5 billion pounds, which covers the whole development with the land and the rebuilt station concourse; construction alone was closer to 435 million. Shanghai Tower cost about 2.4 billion dollars in 2015. The Shard is the clearest case of why two sources disagree threefold about one building without either being wrong.
Why cost climbs faster than height
Doubling the height more than doubles the price. The structure carries more of itself: columns at the base hold everything above them, so they thicken as the tower grows, and above about 40 floors it is wind rather than weight that sets the size of the frame.
Elevators eat the floor plate. Each shaft runs through every floor below the one it serves, and a taller tower needs more of them. The rentable fraction of a 30-story building is around 85 percent; in a supertall it can fall below 65, so the owner builds floor area nobody rents.
Wind engineering becomes a line item. A supertall goes into a boundary layer wind tunnel for weeks, and the result changes the shape. Shanghai Tower's 120-degree twist cut its wind load by about a quarter and paid for itself in steel; Taipei 101 bought a 660-tonne damper instead.
Foundations go deeper and the build takes longer. The Burj Khalifa stands on 192 bored piles reaching 50 m into weak Gulf sandstone, because there is no bedrock to find. A tower that takes six years instead of two carries six years of interest and of price inflation on everything not yet bought, the cost nobody puts on the drawings. The construction sequence shows where those years go.
Where the money goes
Four items take most of the hard cost. The structural frame and foundations run about 20 to 25 percent. The facade is another 15 to 20, and a unitized glass curtain wall costs roughly 70 to 150 dollars per square foot of wall, more if the panels are curved. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, elevators included, take 25 to 30 percent and are usually the largest single line. Fit-out and finishes make up the rest.
The shares shift with use. A residential tower spends more on bathrooms and kitchens and less on air handling; an office tower reverses it.
When a tower stops paying for itself
Above a certain height, usually between 60 and 80 floors depending on the market, each additional floor costs more than the rent it will ever earn. The rentable fraction has fallen, the frame has grown, and the top floors do not let for enough more than the middle ones to cover it.
The towers built past that point are built for other reasons. A record is worth something to a city selling itself to investors, the explicit case for the Burj Khalifa and Jeddah Tower, and a landmark lifts the value of everything around it, which is why Emaar booked the tower against the district. None of that appears in a rent roll. The supertall and megatall classes are almost entirely this kind of building.
Buying one, and keeping it
Buying a finished tower is a different market from building one. The price follows the rent and the yield a buyer will accept, so the same building is worth less in a year when borrowing is expensive. Manhattan trophy towers have changed hands between roughly 1,000 and 2,500 dollars per square foot over the last decade, several for less than they cost to build. Keeping one costs money every year too: elevator machinery on a 25-year cycle, water pumped to the top, a facade whose sealant lasts about 30 years. An owner who cannot cover that stops maintaining the building, one road to an abandoned skyscraper.