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rfmcdonaldThe Vancouver Sun carries Gerry Marr's Financial Post article noting the exceptional unaffordability of housing in Vancouver. I'm left wondering who will be able to afford living there.
According to U.S. group Demographia, Vancouver is the third-least affordable city in the world for a home, and construction constraints are to blame for rising home prices there and in other Canadian cities.
Wendell Cox, the principal owner at Demographia, which looked at 367 markets and nine countries for the study, says that’s a trend that can be seen in Toronto too as limits to ground-level detached housing in favour of condominium living are creating a shortage of housing as people refuse to move into high-rises.
Cox goes one step further and suggests the fertility rate will be impacted in the future in some Canadian cities. “A lot of people don’t want to raise children on the tenth floor of a condominium,” he said.
The study looked at the median cost of a home in each of the markets studied and then divided by the median income to produce a multiple. In Vancouver that $756,200 median-priced house produced a multiple of 10.8 when divided by the median household income of $69,700.
Topping the list was Hong Kong, where residents need 19 times the median income to buy the median-priced house; Syndey, Australia, was second, at 12.2 times. The second-least affordable city in Canada was Victoria, with a multiple of 6.9, followed by Toronto, at 6.7.
