Sunday, January 23, 2011

Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver -- Top Three Least Affordable Cities

PDF is here:
7th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2011

And the "winner" for least affordable in the English-speaking world is:

Hong Kong, with a median multiple of 11.4

followed by:
Sydney, Australia 9.6
Vancouver, Canada 9.5
Melbourne, Australia 9.0
Plymouth & Devon, UK 7.5
San Francisco, US 7.2
London (GLA), UK 7.2
Adelaide, Australia 7.1
San Jose, US 6.7
Brisbane, Australia 6.6
London (Exurbs), UK 7.2
Auckland, NZ 6.4
Perth, Australia 6.3

So, in the top 13 we have every major Australian city. That's pretty amazing. Congratulations Australia. You spare no efforts at misallocation of capital. No point in doing these sorts of things by halves, after all.

After Vancouver, we have to go all the way to 21 at 5.2 to pick up Montreal. Montreal is frequently touted as being affordable because house prices are in the range of $250k to $300k, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have room to fall. And the multiplier certainly supports that.

At 24 we have Toronto at 5.1, Another bubblicious city ripe for adjustment. Calgary at 4.0 looks downright responsible and only gets the label of "Moderately Unaffordable" from the report, as do Ottawa at 3.6 and Edmonton at 3.5.

Central China was not included in the analysis.

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