Posted on 06/28/2024 9:57:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Many cities around the world have become very expensive to buy a home in, but which ones are the absolute most unattainable?
In this graphic, Visual Capitalist' Marcus Lu highlights a number of housing markets that are deemed to be “impossibly unaffordable” in 2024, ranked by their median price-to-income ratio.
This data comes from the Demographia International Housing Affordability Report, which is produced by the Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy.
The median price-to-income ratio compares median house price to median household income within each market. A higher ratio (higher prices relative to incomes) means a city is less affordable.
See the following table for all of the data we used to create this graphic. Note that this analysis covers 94 markets across eight countries: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
According to the Demographia report, cities with a median price-to-income ratio of over 9.0 are considered “impossibly unaffordable”.
We can see that the top city in this ranking, Hong Kong, has a ratio of 16.7. This means that the median price of a home is 16.7 times greater than the median income.
On the flipside, here are the top 12 most affordable cities that were analyzed in the Demographia report.
Cities with a median price-to-income ratio of less than 3.0 are considered “affordable”, while those between 3.1 and 4.0 are considered “moderately unaffordable”.
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Ranked: The Most Valuable Housing Markets in America.
We bought a flat in Hong Kong in 2003. We lived there until 2010. THe sale of that flat funded our retirement
Sigh ... Australia is overrepresented. The housing crisis in Australia is dreadful. Very expensive to buy, even in a regional town.
California came in with 4 of the top 12.
EC
>> We bought a flat in Hong Kong in 2003. We lived there until 2010. THe sale of that flat funded our retirement
I worked a lot in Asia back in my younger days... always wanted to visit Hong Kong and Singapore but never made it to either one. (Spent lots of time in Hsinchu City, though, LOL)
Other than Hong Kong, I have no desire to even visit any of the cities on that list that I haven’t already been to. And to live in any of them? You’d have to pay ME. I’m happy out in the sticks.
No! No! No! Not Oklahoma City! It’s hot, humid, backward, full of toothless, inbred, illiterate rednecks! And it’s merely a microcosm of the entire state! Do not come here!
Affprdable cities: Cleveland, St. Louis.... Who the hell would want to live there?
RE: Who the hell would want to live there?
Precisely. Affordability is in a way, inversely proportional to desirability. Want to make a place more affordable? Make it less liveable and wallah, cheaper property prices.
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