Point2homes has an interesting set of charts on Home Affordability In Canada vs the US.
Key Findings
- The average Canadian has to dish out a whopping 56% more to buy a home, or 25% more to rent one compared to ten years ago, but the median wage in Canada only went up 15%.
- The average home price in the U.S. increased at a much slower rate (24%), while the median income went up by 18%.
- Since 2008, the Canadian dollar lost approximately 25% of its power compared to the American dollar, going from almost perfect parity to a much lower exchange rate.
- The affordability crisis worsened in Canada, where the housing market went from “seriously unaffordable” to “severely unaffordable”, but the American housing market remained in the “seriously unaffordable” category.
Real Housing Prices
- Eight years into the new millennium, the U.S. marched head first into one of the worst economic crises in its history following the bursting of the housing bubble. Canada’s real estate bubble hasn’t yet popped and the country has not yet seen a major decline in home prices, but the Canadian economy experienced its own share of turbulence following the oil price crash from 2014 and the burst of China’s speculative bubble.
- And now, 10 years after the housing crisis that destabilized the U.S., some analysts claim that Canada faces a similar scenario if it stays the course: household debt currently exceeds 100% of GDP, according to data released by the Bank for International Settlements, the average home price went up 56% in ten years, while the median wage per household only increased 15% during the same period, and loose lending is on the rise.
- In the past six years, the Canadian dollar has lost 25% of its power compared to the American dollar, going from almost perfect parity to a much lower exchange rate. Therefore, in this study, the median wages, the average home prices, and average rents in both countries are expressed in the respective country’s currency, to avoid distortions and inaccuracies in percentage changes.
Canada vs US Rent
- The alternative to homeownership, renting has been on the rise in both Canada and the U.S. in the past decade. And so has the average rent in both countries. In Canada, the average amount went up 25% in ten years, and the U.S. had a similar trajectory, posting a 23% increase since 2008. However, all cities are not created equal.
- According to RENTCafé.com, average rents in New York and San Francisco are way ahead of all the other American urban centres: in Manhattan, renters pay $4,119 USD, and even in Brooklyn, they face average rents of $2,801 USD. Four other cities post average rents above $3,000 USD: San Francisco, CA ($3,590 USD), Boston, MA ($3,379 USD), San Mateo, CA ($3,234 USD), and Cambridge, MA ($3,112 USD).
- In Canada, it is Vancouver and especially Toronto that boast the highest rents, but they are well below the highest rental rates in the U.S. – in both cities, the average rent hovers around $2,000 CAD. And Vancouver doesn’t show any signs of slowing down: the provincial government agreed to a 4.5% maximum allowable rent increase for 2019, which is the largest rent increase since 2004 when the ceiling was set at 4.6%.
Unaffordability Nightmare
Mish Comments
Note that Point2homes compared median home price to median annual income. I criticized a US study recently for using averages rather than median values.
What struck me most was the lead claim the “average home price in the U.S. increased at 24%” since 2008. I thought that number was low. It turns out to be high.
The best judge of this is neither median nor average price but rather resales of the same home.
Case Shiller 20 City Composite
Since 2008, the price of the same house in the 20 major city study area rose only 16%. Since March of 2012, however, the price for the same home is up a whopping 55%.
Along with rising interest rates, that is having a severe impact on the US housing market.
Inflation Adjusted Case Shiller
In real terms, US houses are more affordable now than in 2008 but they are not affordable. In Canada, the bubble never corrected at all.
In the US, real median household incomes have been stagnant. Real home prices haven’t.
Lower mortgage payments of existing homeowners do not make homes more affordable. The Fed blew another housing bubble. Once again, the size of the bubble varies city to city.
The Canadian bubble dwarfs the US. It will weigh on Canada for at least another decade.
Related Articles
- Housing Least Affordable in a Decade
- California Ground Zero in Upcoming Real Estate Bust
- Thud! Sept New Home Sales Plunge 5.5% from Dramatically Revised Lower August
- Housing Continues to Weaken: Starts Decline 5.3%, Permits Down 0.6%
Check out the link number one for more charts and studies about housing affordability in the US.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Australia shares the same fate. The debt bubble has triggered high prices from previously uncontrolled foreign investment (from China in particular), generous immigration and greed-inspiring low interest rates. Ultimately if you feed stupidity you get chaos. Low interest rates are to the economy like the low-fat, high sugar dietary rhetoric is to the uneducated. Over the past 40 years, the governments, whose job it is to maintain balance between economic classes, became increasingly self absorbed. Sycophants to unsustainable corporate growth. It might take a decade or two but the end result of such continued incompetence can’t possibly be good.
It is the central banks interest rate setting policy that is the culprit to the woes worldwide. I don’t see it ever changing. If the free market where to determine what interest rates should be I doubt this type of thing would be happening. In the US housing prices are also elevated because the govt also allows interest paid on mortgages to be deducted lowering income taxes and it also guarantees mortgages which also lowers the interest rates on mortgages.
Having relatively tame rent increases compared to house price increases over a long period of time is a hallmark of a real estate bubble. A crash in Canadian real estate values is definitely coming.
Real estate has always been cheaper in the US than in many other industrialized countries.
Canada is a disaster. A worthless shack is $500,000. People are gouged everywhere. Not just in major cities.
To ignore the role of the immigration invasion in the housing disaster isn’t just irresponsible, its criminal.
I’m surprised Canada has not seen the rise of a populist type political candidate as the US and much of Europe have. Unless I just haven’t heard about them?
you say:
“To ignore the role of the immigration invasion in the housing disaster isn’t just irresponsible, its criminal.”
agree with you; just you need to explain which immigrant invasion one today, or one 200 years ago
“agree with you; just you need to explain which immigrant invasion one today, or one 200 years ago”
200 yrs ago would put us at 1818. What immigration invasion would you be talking about?
If recent “immigration” to Canada was any kind of reason for its ridiculous house prices, the price of tipis in North America would be in the billions, considering the infinitely greater immigration into North America back when those where what natives lived in. Yet, instead, a tipi can be had at Walmart for $10.
Manufactured goods, in a free hence competitive market, will be priced at around cost of manufacture. Any time the price of a good costs dramatically more than it costs to make/build; the reason for the artificially high price is always and everywhere, without any exception whatsoever, the same: That people are not free to supply more of the good in question. If people were free, they would supply more of a good they could sell for a multitude of what it cost them to build it. Always and everywhere. In no place and at no time would people not do that.
That is the reason for the idiotic prices: Simple lack of freedom. (That’s, closely related, the reason for the lack of decent middle class jobs and wages as well, but that’s another story…) The reason is never anything else. It’s never “immigrants.” Nor “Chinese.” Nor Hobgoblins. Nor black magic. Nor Twitter. Just always and everywhere the same: Lack of even the most rudimentary tenets of anything resembling freedom.
Excellent comments Stuki
Prices for proper full auto guns have followed a similar trajectory. For exactly the same reasons: Totalitarian government banning people from building and selling new ones. New York Taxi medallions are another example: They cost between a cent and a dollar to print up, are even simpler to build than a house, yet sell for tonloads, even post Uber doing their share to help correct the idiocy.
This is how progressive government rewards incompetent, idle leeches cheering to keep “the system” going at all cost: By crassly stealing from less useless, productive, people, on the leeches behalf.
That way, the only ones who end up “owning” and controlling anything; are clueless, unthreatening, bumbling incompetents; who are completely dependent on government and “the system” for all that they have. While competent people, who being competent at something and all, can easily get by without government stealing on their behalf; are left ever more starved for resources with which to pose an effective threat to the “system” sustaining the incompetents’ privilege.
Thanks for helping me continue to be an alcoholic. That was good justification to finish this bottle.