Vancouver Ranked Least Affordable Housing Market Globally for 18th Consecutive Year — Median Multiple Hits 10.8

Vancouver Ranked Least Affordable Housing Market Globally for 18th Consecutive Year — Median Multiple Hits 10.8

A new report has confirmed what anyone trying to buy a home in British Columbia already knows: Vancouver is the least affordable housing market not just in Canada, but on Earth.

The 2026 edition of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Report was published last week. Produced by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy and the New California Coalition, and co-published by Western Canada’s Frontier Centre for Public Policy, this annual assessment covers 96 major housing markets across eight countries — Canada, Australia, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

This edition covers the third quarter of 2025 (July through September) and uses a rigorous metric to measure affordability.

The Median Multiple: How Housing Affordability Is Measured

Housing markets are rated from affordable to impossibly unaffordable based on their median multiple — the ratio of median house price to median household income.

The classification system is straightforward:

• 3.0 or less = Affordable
• 3.1 to 4.0 = Moderately unaffordable
• 4.1 to 5.0 = Seriously unaffordable
• 5.1 to 8.9 = Severely unaffordable
• 9.0 or higher = Impossibly unaffordable

A median multiple of 9.0 means the typical home costs nine times what a typical household earns in a year. In practical terms, no conventional mortgage can make this work without extraordinary income or generational wealth.

Vancouver: 18 Years at the Bottom

In the report’s global ranking, Vancouver is ranked 92nd out of 96 markets — meaning only three cities are worse. Vancouver’s median multiple is 10.8, placing it in the “impossibly unaffordable” category.

Vancouver is more unaffordable than all but Hong Kong, Sydney, San Jose (California), and Adelaide.

The report notes that “Vancouver has been among the five least affordable major markets in each of the last 18 years.” This is not a cyclical blip. It is an entrenched, structural reality that has persisted across multiple economic cycles, interest rate environments, and policy regimes.

Toronto and the Spread of Severe Unaffordability

Toronto ranks 81st globally, with a median multiple of 7.6 — “severely unaffordable.”

But the crisis is spreading beyond Canada’s two largest cities. The report identifies that severely unaffordable housing has now reached smaller Ontario markets including Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Brantford, London, and Guelph. This is a direct consequence of price displacement — people priced out of Toronto are moving to these smaller markets, pushing affordability levels there into severe territory.

Montreal, long considered Canada’s relative affordability haven, is also now “severely unaffordable” with a median multiple of 5.8. Ottawa sits at 5.0 (“seriously unaffordable”), and Calgary at 4.3.

The One Bright Spot: Edmonton

In a report dominated by grim affordability data, one Canadian market stands out. Edmonton tied with Oklahoma City, Rochester, and St. Louis for the third-best housing affordability ranking among all 96 markets, with a median multiple of 3.6.

The report highlights this as a historic achievement: “Edmonton has the highest-ranking housing affordability ranking ever achieved by a major market outside the United States in the history of Demographia International Housing Affordability.”

This contrast between Edmonton and the rest of Canada underscores a deepening geographic divide in housing affordability that will have significant implications for migration, investment, and policy.

A BC Supreme Court Ruling Could Worsen the Crisis

Beyond the numbers, the report raises a critical warning about a pending legal development. It notes that a recent B.C. Supreme Court decision could reduce new housing supply and sales in the Vancouver market, which it says will likely “worsen housing affordability in this already exceedingly expensive metropolitan area.”

This refers to ongoing legal challenges to BC’s zoning reform measures — including the SSMU (Single-Site Multi-Unit) legislation that allows multiplex development on traditionally single-family lots. If these reforms are rolled back through court action, the modest supply gains they were generating would be reversed at a time when new construction was already declining sharply.

The report’s warning is clear: in a market where the median multiple is already 10.8, any reduction to new supply will have an outsized impact on affordability.

The Bigger Picture: A Decade of Declining Affordability

“There has been a considerable loss of housing affordability in Canada since the mid-2000s, especially in the Vancouver and Toronto markets,” reads the report.

The data tells a stark story: over two decades, Vancouver’s median multiple has moved from the “moderately unaffordable” range into territory that defies conventional economic logic. A median multiple of 10.8 is not just expensive — it fundamentally disconnects housing prices from the incomes of ordinary households.

The implications for first-time buyers, young families, and newcomers are profound. When the typical home costs nearly 11 times the typical household income, homeownership becomes accessible only to those with substantial existing wealth or extraordinary earning power.

What This Means for Investors

The Demographia 2026 report delivers a clear message for investors and policymakers alike:

Vancouver’s affordability crisis is not cyclical — it is structural. It has persisted for 18 consecutive years across multiple economic cycles. The median multiple of 10.8 places Vancouver in a category that can only be described as impossibly unaffordable by any conventional metric.

The spread of severe unaffordability to smaller Ontario markets signals that price pressure is cascading outward — a pattern that suggests the crisis extends far beyond metropolitan cores.

The Edmonton outlier demonstrates that affordability is not inevitable. Markets with adequate supply, reasonable zoning, and balanced economic fundamentals can maintain accessibility — but Vancouver is moving in the opposite direction.

The BC Supreme Court risk adds a wild card: if zoning reforms are overturned, supply constraints will tighten further in the world’s least affordable major housing market.

The full Demographia 2026 report is available through the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.