In some cases, being number two means you have to try harder. Not so much though, when you’re rated as the world’s second least affordable city.

The ninth annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, put out by the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy, ranks Vancouver as the second most unaffordable major market in the world, after Hong Kong. It calls our housing market “severely unaffordable” and “grossly overvalued”.

The survey relies on a measure of housing affordability known as the median multiple (median house price divided by gross before tax annual median household income). Vancouver recorded a median multiple of 9.5, based on a median house price of $621,300 and a median household income of $65,200, in the third quarter of 2012.

With a median multiple of 13.5, Hong Kong had a median house price of $3,810,000 and a median household income of $282,000. According to the survey, the most affordable major market is Detroit due to its “extreme economic decline”. In B.C., Victoria, Kelowna, and Abbotsford were also cited as unaffordable. – Georgia Straight 1/21