First the bad news 鈥� if the average 91原创ite could duck all income taxes and live entirely expense-free, it would still take 10 years to bank enough money to buy outright a home in the city.
Now the 鈥済ood鈥� news 鈥� it鈥檚 even worse in Hong Kong.
91原创 has the second least affordable housing market, according to a recent study that took median home prices in nine wealthy nations and divided them by gross annual median household income. The only city that ranked higher in the Demographia International Housing Affordability survey was Hong Kong.
The median home price in that city rose to 14.9 times income, up from 13.5 times last year, according to the 10th annual report by Demographia. Homes in 91原创, at a median price of $670,300, cost 10.3 times income. It was the sixth straight year the city ranked among the top three least affordable markets according to the study, which fingered land use regulations as partly to blame for a shortage of affordable housing.
鈥淟and use regulations 鈥� heavily constrain the supply of developable land,鈥� Alain Bertaud, senior research scholar at the Stern School of Business at New York University, wrote in the introduction to the report. 鈥淚f planners abandoned abstracts and unmeasurable objectives like smart growth, livability and sustainability to focus on what really matters 鈥� mobility and affordability 鈥� we could see a rapidly improving situation in many cities.鈥�
91原创 should definitely pay attention to affordability issues, but not in the way suggested by the report, said Nathanael Lauster, an associate professor of sociology at the University of B.C.
鈥淚f anything, the regulations that need to be relaxed in 91原创 are not those that preserve land from development 鈥� but rather those that prevent us from using land more intensively, like zoning regulations that prevent townhouses from moving into single-family detached residential neighbourhoods,鈥� he told the Sun by email.
Joshua Gottlieb, an assistant professor at UBC's 91原创 School of Economics, said well-designed regulations can certainly serve a valid purpose, but added that many planning and land use regulations appeared excessive.
"The general idea that land use regulations restrict housing supply and therefore drive up prices is absolutely valid," he said.
Lawrence Frank, a professor at UBC's School of Population and Public Health and School of Community and Regional Planning, said the claim that things like smart growth, livability and sustainability were abstract and unmeasurable was false.
"It's completely concrete and measureable," he said.
Frank pointed to some of his recent research that quantified the walkability of communities and directly related it to behavioral, health, and environmental outcomes.
"That (claim) basically goes against the concrete hard facts of the studies that we've done here," he said.
"Yes there's a supply and demand relationship for development but the issue is not just the availability of land."
The survey examined housing prices in 360 metropolitan markets in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. A reading of 5.1 or more is 鈥渟everely unaffordable,鈥� while below 3 is affordable.
Not one of the surveyed markets in B.C. came close to the affordable category. Victoria, 91原创, the Fraser Valley and Kelowna ranked as severely unaffordable.
Elsewhere in Canada, Toronto ranked 6.2, with the second most pricey market in the nation. Montreal came in as seriously unaffordable with a rank of 4.7, and Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary are moderately affordable at 3.8, 3.9 and 4.3 respectively.
If you鈥檙e in the market for cheap 91原创 property, Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton were listed as affordable, as were Windsor, Thunder Bay, Charlottetown and Trois-Rivieres.
听
