We’ve got some work to do guys. If Vancouver wants to be number one it’s time to pull out all the stops. Let’s bring back the zero down 40 year mortgages and start hustling because right now there are still two more overpriced cities on the globe.
VANCOUVER – Homes are “severely unaffordable” in all four of the B.C. cities that were included in a 325-city international survey of housing costs, and Vancouver’s affordability score was the third-worst of all.
The average home in Vancouver, according to data from the third quarter of last year, cost $602,000 — or 9.5. times the $63,100 median income of households in the city, according to the survey results released Monday by the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre of Public Policy. Only Sydney, Australia, at 9.6 times the median income, and Hong Kong, at 11.4 times, scored worse.
With their housing prices quite a bit lower but their incomes a little lower, too, Victoria, Abbotsford and Kelowna were — in that order — uncomfortably close to Vancouver’s 323rd-place finish in the international rankings.
We can easily beat Sydney’s 9.6 times median income with a small .2 increase, but we’re really going to have to work hard to beat the current champ. It’s going to be tough and we’re all going to have to take on a lot more debt, but for those of you who think it can’t be done just remember: Miami and San Diego used to have higher house prices than us, but we beat them didn’t we?
