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Photographer: Lam Yik Fei/Bloomberg Photographer: Lam Yik Fei/Bloomberg

Hong Kong was named the least affordable housing market for the eighth year in a study that put Sydney in the No. 2 slot and Vancouver as No. 3.

The median price of a home in Hong Kong is 19.4 times the median annual pre-tax household income, up from 18.1 times in the previous study by Demographia, an urban planning policy consultancy.

Cooling measures have failed to tame Hong Kong’s housing, with prices more than double the 1997 levels preceding a crash that obliterated two-thirds of value. Academic research indicates that the city’s home prices have been driven higher by rules restricting land use, Demographia said.

The study took in 293 metropolitan housing markets across nine countries, including Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. Twenty-eight major housing markets were classed as “severely unaffordable,” with locations in California taking six of the top 10 slots.

The data came from the third quarter of last year.

— With assistance by Paul Panckhurst