 
January 22, 2007
Canada Scores First in International Housing Affordability StudyIn the third annual international survey of housing affordability conducted by Demographia International, Canada achieves the best overall performance in the six countries surveyed. Regina was ranked as the country’s most affordable city, with Winnipeg and Québec City tied for second. Vancouver, described as “severely unaffordable,” came in last. The survey was assembled by Wendell Cox, a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and Hugh Pavletich, a property investment manager in New Zealand. To assess affordability, Demographia uses the “Median Multiple,” a standard recommended by the United Nations and the World Bank. It divides median house prices in individual markets by the median annual gross household income. In Canada, on average citizens require only 3.2 years of annual income to purchase a home, the best record in the survey. This year’s survey found that, of the 159 major urban markets in six countries, 42 are affordable, 36 moderately unaffordable, 22 seriously unaffordable and 59 severely unaffordable. All the affordable markets are in North America, with 35 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The entire survey, available at www.demographia.com/dhi-pavrls.htm or www.fcpp.org, includes housing markets in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Cox and Pavletich have granted permission to quote from the survey, with attribution. Respectively, they can be contacted by telephone at 1-618-632-8507 or 011-64-3-343-9944. HOUSING AFFORDABILITY IN CANADA
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