Three-quarters of Metro Vancouver neighbourhoods are too expensive for the typical family to buy a home in, according to an interactive affordability map created by The Vancouver Sun.

According to the map, a family with an income of $80,000 before taxes could not afford to buy the typical home in 76 per cent of the region’s neighbourhoods, including most of Vancouver, the North Shore, Burnaby and Richmond.

In contrast, several neighbourhoods in north Surrey, Langley and Maple Ridge would be within such a family’s budget.

According to the map, a family would have to make about $110,000 a year before half of Metro Vancouver’s neighbourhoods became affordable to them and $150,000 before three-quarters were within their price range.



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Click here to see a larger version of this map.



Tsur Somerville, director of the University of B.C.’s Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, said the map illustrates what many middle-class families have already realized: That to buy a single-family home, they need to move out to the Fraser Valley.

“It is very expensive here and that does create challenges,” he said.

However, Somerville said, being forced to live so far from the urban core may not be as large a hardship as it first appears. For one thing, he said, a lot of the region’s jobs are out in the Valley, too.

“Most people are not commuting from Surrey to downtown Vancouver,” he said. “Most people drive from Surrey to Surrey or Surrey to Coquitlam. … The standard home-work commute is suburb to suburb.”

Somerville said life is about trade-offs and housing is one of them.

“You can’t always get what you want,” he said. “You may want to have meaningful employment that gives back to society and be able to have the house you want in the neighbourhood you want. The reality is, if you want the house you want in the neighbourhood you want, you may have to go be a corporate lawyer. So you make that trade-off.”

What Somerville said does concern him is the lack of diversity in housing options, particularly in the City of Vancouver.

“You want people to have choice. You want to be able to make a trade-off between space and location,” he said. “But if the only housing in the city is going to be really tiny condos and big expensive single-family houses, we’re not giving people that choice.”

Somerville said he’d like to see more mid-priced housing options, like townhouses, in the city. But those types of developments often run into fierce opposition from existing residents.

“The challenge is: Can we create as many options as possible? And I think the problem that’s limiting us from doing that is us. As long as we don’t want our neighbourhoods to change, they can’t change,” he said. “You can’t preserve a neighbourhood the way it is and have higher affordability.”

In order to calculate housing affordability across the region, The Sun used data from the 2011 National Household Survey showing the median home value in every neighbourhood in the region.

The median home value — meaning half of homes are worth more and half are worth less — gives a good indication of the typical cost of housing in each neighbourhood.

However, it doesn’t take into account the range of prices in a neighbourhood. For example, a west-side neighbourhood with lots of single-family homes may have a very high median home value but also contain a couple of townhouse projects that are more affordable.

Similarly, a neighbourhood with a lot of condos — such as the West End — may look more affordable than it really is because while the typical home is less expensive, you don’t get much space for your money.

The online map uses $80,000 in family income as the default, as that’s the median income for the region, along with a down payment of $50,000 and an interest rate of 3.5 per cent. However, all three numbers can be changed on the online map to reflect your personal circumstances.

Vancouver residents concerned about affordable housing can attend an election debate on Oct. 23 from 7 to 9 p.m. at UBC Robson Square, entitled “Affordable Vancouver?”

The debate, organized by The Vancouver Sun and the University of B.C., will feature a council candidate from each major party: Geoff Meggs (Vision), Ian Robertson (NPA), Adriane Carr (Green), Lisa Barrett (COPE), RJ Aquino (OneCity) and Glen Chernen (Cedar Party).

The debate will be live-streamed on vancouversun.com.

cskelton@vancouversun.com

Follow me: @ChadSkelton