Asia’s “jet set” forsake Hong Kong for Singapore

Rich and well-traveled Asians would rather buy property in Singapore.

Almost a third of Asia’s “mobile millionaires” who live, work or spend more than half their time outside their countries of origin prefer Singapore as a second home, said a joint survey by RBC Wealth Management and The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Hong Kong was the choice of 24%.

Real estate led the list of preferred assets for the mobile wealthy. The survey showed 23% of those in Singapore reported a high propensity for property investment compared with 7% in North America.

Of the mobile millionaires who moved to Singapore, 89% ranked quality of life as important and 83% cited the country’s political stability as important. Infrastructure and educational opportunity were also given as reasons to live there.

Singapore posted a 14% increase in millionaire households to 188,000 in 2011, when the Asia-Pacific region countered a decline in wealth in Western Europe and the U.S. The proportion of millionaire homes in the city is 17%, the highest in the world, followed by Qatar and Kuwait.