Vancouver has been ranked the most unaffordable housing market in North America—even beating out notoriously expensive locations such as Manhattan and San Francisco, according to research by Point2Homes real estate firm. When taking into account its low median family income compared to other Canadian cities, as Point2Home’s calculations did, it’s the most unaffordable Canadian city—and, apparently, the most unaffordable on the continent.
The chart below from Point2Homes below rates cities based on “median multiple.” That means that ratings were calculated by dividing the median home price in a city by median household income. With Vancouver’s glaring affordability gap, it’s unsurprising why it would top this list.
That disparity in Vancouver was brought on in part by foreign real estate investment. In 2016, the BC provincial government enacted a 15 percent tax for foreign nationals buying real estate in an effort to address the issue. It’s a move the other famously expensive Canadian city, Toronto, has also made.
For those of us who live in Toronto, though, this chart ranks the city surprisingly low for a place that has a housing crisis: number 13. (Hmm, guess it must be all the rich people here?) Even a rating of 13, though, according to Point2Homes, is considered “seriously and severely unaffordable.”
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