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Off of the top of my head, I am thinking four out of five will likely end up being New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Honolulu. No? Though am not entirely sure. Also don't know what a fifth one would be, maybe Toronto? San Diego? Los Angeles?
Here's some criteria.
Housing prices (in United States dollars)
Price for average rent, monthly
Price per square foot (apartments and homes)
Price to purchase condominiums
Value of land parcels
Also what would some of the more expensive listings (for purchase) look like in each market? How about the other end of the spectrum, what the cheaper listings seem like? Just curious to see the top to bottom dynamic.
Thanks in advance.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 04-02-2015 at 02:52 PM..
Outdated by a year but this is how it was last year:
Quote:
An urban planning think tank says Metro Vancouver has the second-highest housing prices in the world when compared to local incomes.
Demographia compared urban areas with over 1,000,000 residents in OECD countries around the world.
They say Vancouver’s “strong urban containment policies” have caused the city’s affordability to “deteriorate markedly.”
The average house price in Metro Vancouver is $670,300, which would require 80 per cent of the average median household income to service the mortgage. That’s more than 2.5 times the 32 per cent guideline set out by Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Tsur Somerville of the UBC Sauder School of Business says that Vancouver is a very desirable city to live in, and that comes with a cost.
“Within North America, we are an expensive place to be, because lots of people want to be here, we have great amenities, and we don’t have a lot of land. Plus, we have 40,000 people coming here from overseas with assets to purchase houses and other things.”
Somerville says if you want to live in Vancouver, be prepared to earn less than people doing the same job in other major centres.
“Places that have a lot of amenities and are places that people really want to live, pushes up house prices, but also lowers wages, and employers are paying people less who are willing to take a lower paying job to be there. So you get a higher price-to-income ratio.”
He says companies face challenges when staffing their Vancouver offices.
“Vancouver faces challenges because of housing prices – for a lot of firms, hiring people is hard unless people are willing to pay the price for living here,” says Somerville.
San Francisco-Oakland is the third most unaffordable city in the world, with an average house price of $705,000 and a median income of $76,300.
TORONTO — Vancouver is the second most unaffordable housing market in the world after Hong Kong, according to a new study of major property markets.
That could spell trouble for homeowners if mortgage rates rise, economists say.
“Given how high house prices are relative to household incomes, you’d only have to see a moderate increase in mortgage rates to have a really huge hit to affordability,” said David Madani, Canada economist at Capital Economics.
The annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey ranks real estate markets in Canada, the United States, Australia, China, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
A report released Monday by TD Economics said even a mortgage increase of two percentage points could cause financial hardship among Greater Toronto Area homeowners, pushing up the number of residents who devote 30% of their income to mortgage payments to 20% from 16%.
Although Vancouver was the only Canadian city that made it to the Top 10 list, housing markets in Toronto, as well as in Victoria, Kelowna and the Fraser Valley in B.C., were also ranked as unaffordable by the Demographia study.
The report blames Ontario’s urban containment policy, a development plan that strives to prevent urban sprawl, for Toronto’s swelling home prices.
San Francisco/Bay Area for most expensive on all but value of land (trails NYC, well ahead of the rest), NYC trails SF/Bay Area on all measures but value of land.
NYC (particularly parts of Manhattan) has by far highest peaks all across the board (which is a different thing entirely).
There's a huge gap between those two markets and the rest, with isolated pockets of the rest potentially showing microcosms of SF/NYC pricing, but not in abundance.
This is a comparison of all places throughout North America, not just the United States. Even in the United States, there's Honolulu, which I am just about 100% sure is the second most expensive housing market in America after San Francisco Bay Area. I believe going off of median housing values.
What are the 5 and how do they stack up against each other? How does Mexico City stack up, anyone know?
After NYC and SF, there is a ~$1K drop in median rent (and it goes to Boston/DC). Oakland is about on par with those two cities. San Jose also up there.
In terms of land pricing, a Chinese firm just paid $296M for a parcel that's a little more than an acre and can fit 2 towers.
For resi pricing (for apartments, condos, or a house it all varies), it varies.
A hotel just traded for over a $1M/key.
Office rents avg >$60psf in both SF and NYC, and can top $100psf in either (can top $200psf in parts of Midtown Manhattan overlooking CP).
In a nutshell, it's hard to find a class of real estate more expensive than NYC or SF in other cities.
The big standout would be retail, where Manhattan is the priciest in the world and there is a HUGE gap to SF/Golden Triangle in LA/Chicago, and then a gap behind those three to the rest.
Vancouver is insanely expensive too, average detached is $ 1.5 million
Toronto average for detached now just about $ 1 million, it's rapidly getting there
Central Bay Area Counties( Pop 6.4 Million)
by Median Home Price, February 2015
San Mateo County $1,200,000
San Francisco City $1,154,760
Marin County $1,023,440
Santa Clara County $915,130
Contra Costa County $738,090
Alameda County $697,160
This sort of explains why Alameda County is now the fastest growing county in California. lol
Per square foot looks like Honolulu metro is the most expensive.
Avg sale price per sq ft according to Zillow
Honolulu Metro: $432
SF Metro: $398
LA Metro: $374
San Diego Metro: $286
NY Metro: $243
If you are talking about metros, all Eastern metros are pretty cheap compared to the West. For NYC metro, somewhere in PA you can buy a house for like $200k... I mean in the Poconos you can buy 3bds 2ba 1700 sq ft house for like 110k-150k easy, and condos for like 50k.
If you are talking about metros, all Eastern metros are pretty cheap compared to the West. For NYC metro, somewhere in PA you can buy a house for like $200k... I mean in the Poconos you can buy 3bds 2ba 1700 sq ft house for like 110k-150k easy, and condos for like 50k.
This is technically true, yet basically irrelevent. The Poconos comprise less than .25% of the NYC metro area population. The CSA has like 24 million people and the one Poconos county included in the CSA has like 50k people. It would be like saying that San Francisco is cheap because Tracy, CA is cheap, or LA is cheap because Victorville is cheap.
NYC, DC and Boston are all very expensive metro areas. Philly somewhat less so. The only cheap areas are either crappy or super-far from employment centers.
Also, having lived on both the East and West coasts, one cannot compare based on sales price alone. You have to compare on total costs. East Coast areas tend to have much higher taxes and much higher utility costs, so the annual outlays are similar even if the West Coast sales price is higher. A 800k home on Long Island is actually significantly more expensive over time than a $1 million home in Orange County (CA) in my experience, mostly because of taxes and heating (the LI home will have an annual 25k tax bill, the OC home will have an annual 5k tax bill; the LI home will have at least $500/month in heating costs in winter, the OC home will have 0).
These additional costs are factored into the sales price, of course. This is why everyone knows that Westchester County, NY generally more expensive/exclusive than Fairfield County, CT, even though median sales prices are almost exactly the same. Westchester has higher taxes so is considered more expensive apples-to-apples.
Also, for NYC prices, they are totally irrelevent. You cannot compare for-sale prices in NYC (proper) to anywhere else in the country, becasue most for-sale real estate in the Five Boroughts consists of co-ops, not condos or houses. If you know anything about co-ops, you know they cannot be compared to other housing typologies in terms of sales price. You are buying shares in a corporation, you are not buying the real estate you occupy. Much of the co-op "value" is reflected in your monthlies and not on the purchase price (which is often all-cash or at least 50% cash).
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