NYC: the bucks stop here.

Among the international collection of cities in which having office space is considered indispensable to a tenant's global ambitions, Manhattan, for all of its precipitous rental increases in the past few years, is surprisingly far from the most expensive.

Although the midtown office market--Manhattan's priciest commercial district--is teetering on the cusp of all-time high rental rates, a new list compiled by the global real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis ranks the cost of class A office space in midtown 24th out of a list of 50 cities located internationally.

Listing the district's average rental rate for class A space at $62.07 per s/f, midtown sits just behind Zurich, Switzerland and far behind London's West End office district, which held the top spot with rents that average $212.03 per s/f. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Moscow, Mumbai, Paris, Dublin and Dubai rounded out the top 10. Only the latter two had rents that weren't in the triple digits and only London was the only city with rents above $150 per s/f.

A member of CB Richard Ellis's market research staff in its London office revealed that the methodology used to calculate many of the rental rates wasn't to take a true average, but rather a rate that reflected the most lucrative deals in that office district. The $212.03 rate in London's West End, for instance, was indicative of the rents for space within only that district's priciest submarkets, such as St. James's and Mayfair. The staff member said the market lacked the transparency to put together an average rather than a rate that signifies a high watermark in the market.

If Manhattan's rents were sampled similarly, the city would have occupied the second spot on the list in front of second place Tokyo's $145.68 per s/f rate. Deals have been signed in midtown for rents in excess of $150 per s/f.

Adding to the West End's high value is the favorable conversion of British pounds into American dollars, an exchange that could have helped a number of cities from the United Kingdom into the top 25. Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Bristol and Aberdeen all made the top 25.

Still, some experts explained that the UK's booming office market is a palpable result of its roaring economy.

"You can just feel it over there, there's something in the air," said Ward Caswell, CBRE's US director of research. "Their economy is booming."

Another factor responsible for New York City's low rank is that there is no adjustment that takes into account the vast size differences between each city. In smaller cities, global demand can fast exceed supply and quickly spike rents, whereas in a major metropolis like Manhattan, rents can only be pushed upwards by tremendous and sustained demand.

"Warsaw was a city like that," said Michael Haddock, a director of research in CBRE's London office. "When the country opened up after communism fell, there was a rush to get into the city but almost no quality office stock so rents for good buildings rose unnaturally high. Rents there now are about half what they were a decade ago."

Warsaw occupies the last spot on the top 50 list with rental rates of $41.58 per s/f.

One example of the inequity in ranking that this situation can create is in Moscow, which has experienced a staggering rate of construction but whose total square footage pales in comparison to Manhattan's 340 million s/f. Shanghai, one of the only cities on the list whose size compares to Manhattan, ranked 42.