Local housing affordability improves slightly: report
Posted March 7, 2012 8:17 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Vancouver is still Canada’s least-affordable housing market by a wide margin, but the situation improved slightly at the end of 2011.
An index from the Royal Bank says the basic costs of owning and operating a local bungalow used up 86 per cent of a typical household’s income. But the fourth-quarter figure is actually 4.6 percentage points better than the previous quarter, which itself was an improvement over the second quarter.
No other city is even close to Vancouver; Toronto is second but about 34 points lower.
RBC says the local improvement is “due to a further reversal of earlier substantial increases in home prices, particularly in the Vancouver area, as well as income gains arising from steady job creation.”
Nonetheless, RBC Chief Economist Craig Wright says “Despite the fact that BC registered the most significant reduction in home ownership costs in the country, the provincial housing market remains the least affordable in Canada.”
