Woman frustrated, surrounded with boxes on a lonely move / Shutterstock
To add insult to injury for single Metro Vancouverites this Valentine’s Day, a study released by property website Zoocasa February 14 has revealed the best and worst Canadian cities to buy a home on a single person’s income.
Unsurprisingly, Metro Vancouver came out on top – as the worst city in the country.
Zoocasa found that median single-person annual household income in Metro Vancouver, across all age groups, is $50,271. With an annual income of $139,082 required to buy a home at the region’s benchmark price of $1,019,600, that’s the biggest income-to-price gap in the country.
The affordability assumptions are based on already having a 20 per cent down payment, with a fixed-rate mortgage at 3.29 per cent over a 30-year amortization period.
The income gap is even worse for younger locals, as Metro Vancouver singles aged 24-34 earn a median of $46,308, said the study (although, you would expect that someone in that age group is more likely to purchase a starter condo than a million-dollar home).
Zoocasa found that Greater Toronto was the second-worst city for a single to buy a home, followed by Greater Victoria.
The best city in the country for singles to buy a home was Regina, where an annual income of just $38,798 is needed to buy the average-priced home of $284,424. That’s not the lowest home price in Canada, but in Regina the median singleton’s income is $58,823, which is the largest amount above the income needed to buy the average priced home.
Check out the income-gap rankings of all the major cities in the study, and scroll down for the full list of home prices and median incomes by age groups, below.
