International housing affordability survey says Saskatoon homes still among the world’s most affordable
In spite of the fact that the average selling price of a Saskatoon home has risen over 50 percent in the past five years, Saskatoon remains one of the most affordable housing markets in the world, according to a recent study conducted by Pavletich Properties Ltd. and published in the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey for 2007.
The survey measures median incomes for each market and compares them against housing prices to arrive at “median multiple.” The survey considers a home “affordable” if it costs less than three times a household’s gross income.
Saskatoon tied for 15th place with six American markets including Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Syracuse, New York.
Topping the list of the “world’s most affordable” was Regina, our neighbour to the south which was tied for first place with Fort Wayne, Indiana. Quebec City and Winnipeg were the only other Canadian cities which were marginally more affordable than Saskatoon. Ottawa, Oshua and London also made the list of “affordable” places to buy a home, but just barely. Houses in Ottawa are 2.9 times the median income for the area while Oshua and London command prices which are 3 times the median income.
Houses in Montreal, St. Catherines, Edmonton and Halifax make the “moderately unaffordable” list.
Toronto and Calgary were classified as “seriously unaffordable.”
Vancouver and Victoria were rated as “severely unaffordable.” Vancouver came in as 13th in the world for “most unaffordable.” Expect to pay 7.7 times the median income in the area for a typical house.
According to the survey, Los Angeles-Orange County, California is the world’s most expensive markets. Typical houses cost 11.1 times the median income for the area.
I’m always happy to answer your Saskatoon real estate questions. All of my contact info is here. Please feel free to call or email.
Follow our daily updates on Twitter @norm_fisher.
Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Saskatoon Real Estate
1 comment so far. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:42 PM
The survey, which compares prices with local incomes, concludes that Los Angeles is the world’s most unaffordable market. California in generally is highly unaffordable, it says, along with Hawaii, the East Coast, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and British Columbia. Pictured above is a nice house in Sydney, Australia, from the Sydney Morning Herald.Canadian and U.S. cities top the list of more affordable areas. Among the bigger ones that Demographia considers affordable are Atlanta, Dallas, and Ottawa.In an introduction to the survey, Donald Brash, former governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, says that “the affordability of housing is overwhelmingly a function of just one thing, the extent to which governments place artificial restrictions on the supply of residential land.” Case in point for him is Australia, which is mostly empty yet still has high house prices because of restrictive zoning laws.