Most people know Vancouver's housing market is bad news.
Vacancy rates are basically non-existent, family homes sit empty and above everything else, the market is expensive.
According to new research from Demographia, house prices rose the equivalent of a full year’s household income in 2016.
This was enough to rank the city in the “severely unaffordable” category.
What's the least affordable place to live on earth? Hong Kong. Followed by Syndey, Australia and then B.C.'s largest city, Vancouver.
To get their numbers, Demographia studied 92 major cities across nine countries and divided the median house price by the median household income in each market.
Right behind Vancouver is Auckland, New Zealand, the fourth least affordable city in the world.
Vancouver house prices have been rising well above the economic fundamentals in Canada for at least a decade, the survey notes:
“Vancouver had already developed a severely unaffordable housing market in the first Survey (2004), which has been associated with its urban containment policy, adopted about five decades ago.”
The city has also experienced “the greatest housing affordability deterioration” among major markets, according to the survey.
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