20 January 2015 – At 17 times the median household income, Hong Kong’s home prices continue to top the list of least affordable markets among major world cities according to American research institution Demographia’s latest report.
The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey 2015 includes 378 property markets around the globe, generating Median Multiples according to the proportion of average property price to median household income. Results are categorized into 4 levels: Affordable (Below 3 times), Moderately Unaffordable (3.1 to 4 times), Seriously Unaffordable (4.1 to 5 times) and Severely Unaffordable (5.1 times and over).
Hong Kong falls into the grading of ‘Severely Unaffordable’, with the highest recorded index of 17.0 since the report commenced 11 years ago. Second on the list was Vancouver with an index of 10.6, still significantly lower than HK. There are 85 ‘Severely Unaffordable’ markets in total, with others including Sydney (9.8), San Francisco (9.2), London (8.5) and Auckland (8.2).
On the other side of the list, the world’s most affordable city is Limerick in Ireland (2.0), while most ‘Affordable’ and ‘Moderately Unaffordable’ markets are found in the United States (185 among 217 markets). Other ‘Affordable’ cities include Detroit in the US (2.1), Moncton in Canada (2.2), and Waterford in Ireland (2.2).
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