Saskatoon housing affordability shows slight year-over-year improvement: Demographia

Housing affordability in the Saskatoon area improved slightly for the second consecutive year, according to the 7^th Annual Demographia Housing Affordability Survey, but not enough to remove it from the ranks of the most “seriously unaffordable” places to buy a home. According the Demographia’s estimates, Saskatoon home buyers can expect to pay 4.3 times the median income for the area to purchase a home priced at the median. The median defines the centre point of value at which half of all sales occur above and half occur below.  While Saskatoon saw its second improvement in as many years our current ranking of 4.3 leaves us amongst the most expensive Canadian markets to own a home and well above the national ranking of 3.4 which Demographia defines as just “moderately unaffordable.”

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Most Canadian markets managed to record some improvements on a year-over-year basis. The greatest changes were seen in Calgary and Edmonton, both of which moved into, or significantly towards, the moderately unaffordable territory. Both markets shaved a half-year off of the median income multiplier that Demographia uses to measure affordability. Nationally, we saw an improvement in the median multiple of 0.3 from the survey released a year ago.

Once again, the major British Columbia markets win the prize for the largest income to price gap. In Vancouver, it’s estimated to take 9.5 times median income to own a home priced at the median for the city.

See the entire Demographia survey for 2011 and past reports for 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006.

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Norm Fisher
Royal LePage Vidorra