Vancouver Has The Least Affordable Housing Market In Canada & It's Now Impacting All Of BC

Anyone in North America who doesn't live in Vancouver, B.C. can do a little happy dance — because your rent could be a whole lot worse.

Vancouver beat out every other city in Canada and the U.S., coming in as the third least affordable housing market in the world in a recent report.

The only markets (metropolitan areas) in the world which beat out Vancouver on its housing unaffordability are Hong Kong and Sydney.

The 2022 edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability reports on the affordability of markets globally, examining metropolitan areas in eight different nations.

"As the pandemic and lockdowns continued into a second year, the movement of households from denser urban neighbourhoods to larger homes, often with large yards (gardens) in suburban and outlying areas has continued," the report said.

"The result has been to drive up prices at unprecedented rates in many markets. As a result many low-income and middle-income households who already have suffered the worst consequences from housing inflation will see their standards of living further decline," it added.

Vancouver housing prices are known to be out of control, leading to new regulations like a housing cooling-off period being implemented in the province.

The impact on the rest of B.C.

The city's steep housing costs don't just affect Vancouverites, though. People living in areas outside of the city are also being impacted by the market.

"Severely unaffordable housing has spread from Vancouver to smaller markets, as metro Vancouver has shed domestic migration to smaller markets in British Columbia, such as Chilliwack, the Fraser Valley, and Kelowna and markets on Vancouver Island," the report added.

The "severely unaffordable" housing market of Vancouver has led people to move out of the city, in order to afford to live in the province.

Vancouver isn't totally alone in this though.

Toronto is the second least affordable market in Canada, and the report said that the unaffordable housing there has also spread to other areas, "Kitchener-Waterloo, Brantford, London and Guelph, as residents of metro Toronto seek lower costs of living."