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“It was really surprising to me that we have the 15th highest incomes in Metro Vancouver, even coming behind Toronto,” Yan said. “What we learned today is in Vancouver you are living in paradise, but your wages are in purgatory.”

Yan said the new national income figures support the argument that speculation and certain amounts of foreign investment are driving home prices in Vancouver and Toronto especially, while other national housing markets are generally aligned with local job markets.

“No matter where you live in Canada you will have some element of globalization, but it is particularly acute in Vancouver,” Yan said. “The issue that urgently needs solving is to reconnect local incomes to local housing. But the difficulty is, you will need different policy for different cities.”

A comparison of Stats Can wage figures for 2015 with aggregate home prices (including detached, semi-detached and condominiums) for the first quarter of 2017 shows the acute challenges faced by Metro Vancouver wage earners.

For the City of Vancouver, the average home cost just over $1.4 million according to the Royal LePage National House Price composite. Median total household income in the city for 2015 was $65,327, the latest census showed. For the District of North Vancouver, median total income was $103,981, compared to an average home cost of just under $1.4 million. In the City of Richmond, the average house cost was just over $1 million and median total income was $65,241.