Toronto Housing is still affordable. Fight the Tax to keep it that way!

Vancouver third most expensive in world for housing, Toronto 13th: study

Excerpted from The Toronto Star
Among cities with a population over 1 million, Toronto ranked 13th least affordable in the survey.

Home prices in Vancouver are 11.8 times higher than the median household income.  (Jonathan Hayward / THE CANADIAN PRESS)  

By The Canadian Press

Mon., Jan. 23, 2017

VANCOUVER—An annual international survey rates Vancouver as the third least affordable housing market on the planet and it also has a warning about Toronto housing.

The 2017 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey gives Vancouver a rating of 11.8, meaning median home prices are 11.8 times higher than median household income.

Read more: Toronto house prices climb more than 22%

Only Hong Kong, with a rating of 18.1, and Sydney, Australia, at 12.2, outstrip Vancouver.

Demographia says housing markets are affordable when median prices are no more than three times higher than median household income.

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The 2017 survey ranks 406 markets in nine nations and puts Toronto at 28th on the list with a ranking of 7.7.

Among cities with a population over 1 million, Toronto ranked 13th least affordable in the survey.

Demographia says Toronto posted a year-on-year home-price increase equal to a year of household income and it says soaring house prices will undermine the city’s recent best-city rating from The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Other cities on the top 10 unaffordable list include Auckland, where prices are 10 times above median income, followed by San Jose, Calif., Melbourne, Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the southwestern England region of Bournemouth and Dorset.