DEMOGRAPHIA at Brian Ripley's Canadian Housing Price Charts & Plunge-O-Meter

2021 Edition of the Annual Demographia Ranking of Canada's 6 Biggest Metros in 3Q 2020 and Demographia RANKED CITIES IN CANADA SOURCE NOTES and PAST RANKINGS below.

Thanks to Hugh Pavletich and Wendell Cox co-authors of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. This chart shows that Vancouver BC continues to rank as the least affordable city in the largest Canadian cities with a multiple of 13 times median household income required to buy a median priced house.

As of Q3 2020 the 6 biggest cities ranked from least to more affordable are: Vancouver 13, Toronto 9.9, Montreal 5.6, Ottawa 5.2, Calgary 4.1, and Edmonton 3.8

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DEMOGRAPHIA RANKED CITIES in CANADA are TABLED BELOW

DEMOGRAPHIA RANK BELOW

Annual Demographia Ranks of the six largest Canadian Cities in 3Q 2020 (Price / Income). They are affordable when the ratio is under 3 but are severely unaffordable when over 5.

The table below is sorted with the highest ratio of median housing cost to median household income at the top showing that Vancouver is the most unaffordable city in Canada requiring a buyer to pay 13 times annual income. Vancouver ranks 2nd most unaffordable city in 92 world markets after "1st" place Hong Kong CN.

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DEMOGRAPHIA NOTES

"As a city develops, nothing is more important than maintaining mobility and housing affordability." Alain Bertaud

Affordability is the ability for any urban household to be able to rent a dwelling for less than a 25% of its monthly income, or to buy one for less than about three time its yearly income.

The mobility and affordability objectives are tightly related. A residential location that only allows access to only a small segment of the job market in less than an hour commuting time has not much value to households, even if it is theoretically affordable.

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In Canada, the difference among the six major markets Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary and Edmonton was 1.5 median multiple points in 1971 and rose to 2.5 in the mid-2000s and is now (3Q 2020) 9.3, more than six times that of 1971.

The deterioration in housing affordability represents an existential threat to the middle-income households. Higher housing costs relative to incomes are strongly correlated with higher overall costs of living and thus lower standards of living. 3Q 2020 Demographia

Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class

The OECD emphasizes that the threats to the middle-class crisis are in large measure the result of costs of living that have risen at rates far greater than incomes.

The OECD particularly notes that: “…,
the cost of essential parts of the middle-class lifestyle have increased faster than inflation; house prices have been growing three times faster than household median income over the last two decades.” These higher housing costs are a threat to the middle-income lifestyle, because they reduce discretionary income and thus, the standard of living.

As a result, adult children can no longer depend on having higher incomes than their parents, at least in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and elsewhere. It is not surprising that there is increasing concern about income inequality.

Facilitating broadly affluent living standards is a fundamental function of domestic public policy. This requires elimination of planning requirements that undermine prosperity, which has not been recognized in many nations. There are important exceptions, such as Singapore (See: Introduction: Focus on Singapore), which has had housing affordability as a core strategy for half a century and New Zealand, which is seeking to implement substantive proposals to restore housing affordability.

It took millennia to create the incomparably broad prosperity of the modern middle-class. It is worth both preserving and restoring. OECD May 2019

PAST RANKINGS