Can you afford to buy a house in your city?
A worldwide survey says forget about Vancouver and Victoria, consider Winnipeg and Regina—and Kansas City and Buffalo are reasonable too.
Kate Lunau | Dec 20, 2007 | 11:30 am EST
With house prices soaring by 10 per cent in the past year, many Canadians are struggling to find an affordable home. But take a step back, and Canada’s situation doesn’t look so bad, as Jason Kirby reports in the current issue of Maclean’s. In fact, when compared to some of the world’s other major centres, Canadian cities still offer some of the best housing deals anywhere.
Each year, Demographia—a U.S.-based real estate research firm—reports on housing affordability in 159 major markets around the world. Their most recent report found that Canada had some of the most affordable regions of all the nations surveyed (which included the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand). In fact, Regina, SK, is listed as one of the three most affordable markets (Fort Wayne, IN, and Youngstown, OH, were the others).
And while both Vancouver and Victoria ranked among the 25 least-affordable markets in the survey, earning the description of “severely unaffordable,” they were the only Canadian cities represented in that category—well below the number of U.S. cities (14), as well as the U.K. (5) and Australia (4).
Calgary and Toronto, meanwhile, were described as “seriously unaffordable,” while Montreal, St. Catharines, Edmonton, Hamilton and Halifax are “moderately unaffordable.” But good news – several Canadian cities were classified “affordable,” including Ottawa, Saskatoon, Quebec, Winnipeg, and of course, Regina.
Below are some selected highlights from its 2007 survey (based on 2006 figures), ranking a city’s housing affordability from least, to most, affordable:
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20071220_113042_9300
