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Apparently Vancouver has a new season — the housing unaffordability season — that gloomy time of year in January when anyone with an opinion on the subject publishes reports on how impossibly expensive it is to buy property in our city and region.

This time it was the release on Monday of the 13th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability’s report that compares the median cost of housing in cities in nine countries to median incomes. Basically, it reports on how many years of income it takes to buy a typical home.

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Not surprisingly, Vancouver was again found to be very unaffordable, coming in as the third most unaffordable city behind No. 1 ranked Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia. As of last year, it takes 11.8 years of income in Vancouver to buy a median home, compared to 18.1 years in Hong Kong and 12.2 years in Sydney.

Demographia says a price-income ratio of 3.0 or less is affordable, moderately unaffordable from 3.1 to 4.0, seriously unaffordable from 4.1 to 5.0, and severely unaffordable at a ratio of 5.1 or greater, which indicates how unaffordable housing is in Vancouver. It’s off the charts.