Tuesday, August 09, 2011

It's getting lonely at the top

Harken back to the last report by Demographia on median price to median income ratios of English-Speaking cities (and Hong Kong). A reminder about the ratios of the top 10 cities:

Hong Kong 11.4
Sydney 9.6
Vancouver 9.5
Melbourne 9.0
Plymouth&Devon 7.5
San Francisco 7.2
London 7.2
Adelaide 7.1
San Jose 6.7
Brisbane 6.6

Since then Australia has hit a bit of a snag, the snag being prices aren't going up any more. In Vancouver... well the benchmark is up 13% and incomes are basically flat. So we can extrapolate plausible Demographia data for 2011 assuming no price changes going forward, assuming 2% median wage growth (I kept HK the same due to lack of data):

Hong Kong 11.4
Vancouver 10.5
Sydney 9.4
Melbourne 8.8
Plymouth&Devon 7.4
San Francisco 7.1
London 7.1
Adelaide 7.0
San Jose 6.6
Brisbane 6.5

If Vancouver usurps Hong Kong at the top of the survey that will be something, and it's no longer out of the realm of possibility if wage growth in Hong Kong is high...

2 comments:

M- said...

Nifty, we're almost #1!

patriotz said...

HK's ownership rate is under 50%, so it's not really valid to compare it against cities in Oz or Canada. The market for owner-occupied properties represents a higher income cohort than here.