Also it sounds like you were buying somewhere, not renting. A furnished rental apartment shouldn't require buildings insurance, contents should either be part of the rent or not at all (as the landlord is required to insure their equipment by law - but not yours - you'd do that separately but you'd certainly have to do that anywhere else I've been), a TV licence is optional - you only need it to watch live TV and all the major channels have on-demand Internet equivalents that are perfectly fine unlike other countries you may have been (we're looking at ditching the licence when the Digital TV switch kicks in). I'm surprised you're putting phone, internet and mobile phone in there - unless you're flatsharing I'm not aware of anyone that would include those as part of the rent, especially mobile phones?

I guess my point is that it's not a like for like comparison to compare your rental costs in one country with mortgage + all inclusive of everything, even secondaries in another. Rather than defending it, and I appreciate it's a PITA to do what I'd suggest and may contradict what you're trying to achieve, I'd like to suggest that you write a followup comparing like for like costs with their equivalents and provide explicit examples alongside the benefits and drawbacks of each - e.g. being near the beach at Cape Town versus being near the beach at Blackpool.