Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
From BIV today. Gosh, what could be causing such an imbalance?
Data ahead of Vancouver election reveals extent of gap between income, home prices
By Chuck Chiang | October 13, 2022, 1:44pm
Just days before the municipal elections in Vancouver, the latest data analysis from a leading urban planning expert in the city again highlighted just how big the affordability problem is for the city and the region at-large.
In the latest analysis by Simon Fraser University City Program director Andy Yan (based on 2021 Census data from Statistics Canada) charting Canadian cities’ 2020 median value of dwellings when compared to household income levels, Vancouver remains a salient outlier in terms of the disparity between prices and people’s wages....
...In the report, Vancouver recorded a 2020 median dwelling value of $1,450,000 – 18 times the amount of the city’s median total income per household ($82,000). Among major Canadian cities, no one else is close to that 18x multiple – including Surrey, which reported a dwelling value of $1 million against a household income average of $98,000, a 10x multiple.
In comparison, the only other major centre (with populations above 1 million in the surround CMA) with a double-digit multiple is Toronto (dwelling value $90,000 – household income $84,000, for an 11x multiple). Meanwhile, Montreal (multiple of 8), Ottawa (multiple of 6), Calgary (multiple of 5) and Edmonton (multiple of 4) all sit below that threshold, indicating a narrower disparity between people’s incomes and housing costs....
....“Vancouver was always expensive, but it wasn’t to this level,” Yan said. “In the 1990s, things were more clustered, and the fact is that it did change from the 1990s to now... The statistics show us that change is possible; in this case, a change to being more affordable is possible. It’s really a question of what kind of leadership can take us there.”...
https://biv.com/article/2022/10/data...me-home-prices
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Andy Yan should know better, and you can put the dog whistle away. Toronto is an amalgamated city, with over 2.7m people. The City of Vancouver is only a quarter of the 2.6m people in Metro Vancouver - so that's what he should compare with the City of Toronto.
The median household income in Metro Vancouver is $90,000, while the median household income in Toronto is $84,000.
The median value of a dwelling in Metro Vancouver was $1,050,000 and in Toronto was $900,000.
So Metro Vancouver has a multiplier of 12 (not 18) which is very close to Toronto's 11.
The slightly higher value of Vancouver real estate can be explained by the fact that 28% of Vancouver homes in 2021 were single detached, but only 23% of Toronto's are. And Metro Vancouver's homes are newer - 34% of all homes were built in the past 20 years, while only 24% of Toronto's were.