As Frank Sinatra famously said, “Start spreading the news — I’m leaving today.”
For all its glamour and grime, New York has long been known to have one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, but a report published this week put Toronto on top.
The finding was part of a study by brokerage Zoocasa, which compared housing affordability in 40 cities, 28 of them American and 12 of them Canadian. The calculations included median household incomes, average home prices and mortgage rates, all converted to USD.
According to the report, the top 10 least affordable cities, in order, were San Francisco, San Diego, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Boston, Toronto, Miami, New York City, Seattle and Hamilton-Burlington.
The report calculated Toronto’s median home price to be USD $718,519 (as of January 2024) while the median home price in The Big Apple was lower, at USD $659,300 (as of December 2023). Meanwhile, the median household income was lower in Toronto than in New York — USD $62,963, compared to USD $76,607.
All told, the gap between what people could afford and the price of an average home was actually wider in Toronto than in New York, a difference of $362,627 compared to $316,215, respectively.
Toronto also ranked as more expensive than Miami, where the median home price was $630,000 and the median income was $64,215, for a gap of $342,413 between the home an average person could afford and the actual price of an average home.
Canadian housing is less affordable than U.S. housing — with notable exceptions
It’s not just Toronto — overall, Canadians home prices were higher while incomes were lower, the study found.
“In 2021, the median household income in the US was $75,149, while in Canada the median household income was $54,074 ($73,000 CAD),” the report said. “The disparity between the two countries becomes more pronounced when examining national average home prices.
“In 2022, a year when home prices in both nations reached record highs, the average home price in Canada was still over $30,000 higher than in the US, even though Canadians had a median income that was $20,000 lower,” it added.
Rising interest rates and low supply dealt a blow to markets across Canada and the United States, but the impact was worse in Canada, especially given that people had less buying power here, the report said.
However, there were a number of Canadian cities that were more affordable than U.S. cities.
Out of eight cities with median incomes that could afford the median home price, the study noted, five of them were in Canada: Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Saint John. The American cities were Chicago, Philadelphia, and Oklahoma City.
Alberta cities stand out for income and affordability
While Saint John and Saskatoon were the most affordable Canadian cities in the report, Calgary and Edmonton stood out because their median household incomes were higher.
Among Canadian cities the report looked at (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton-Burlington, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Saint John and Halifax-Dartmouth) Calgary had the highest median income at $64,444. The average home price there was $340,741, affordable for a median-income household.
Edmonton was even more affordable, however. Residents there had a median income of $62,222, but only a median home price of $294,815.
In both cities, median-income households could afford even more than the median home price — $23,522 more in Calgary and $56,888 in Edmonton.
