Not necessarily.
If you want more affordable housing, you might guess that moving to the suburbs is the answer. Not always! You’ll actually need to work longer – earning the local average wage – to buy a home in Long Island (14.6 years) than in New York (13.4 years); more years in Ventura County (16.5 years) than in Los Angeles (15.5 years) …
Moving to the suburbs or a smaller city can be the key to affordability, though, if you keep your job in the big city.
… a Tacoma house takes only 6.7 years of Seattle wages. That gets you to homeownership a lot faster than living and working in Tacoma (9.3 years) or living and working in Seattle (also, coincidentally, 9.3 years).
I think increased transportation costs & commuting time need to be factored in. If you live in a dense urban area where housing is more expensive but work near home, you can save thousands per year by running fewer or no vehicles. 20 years of car commuting is likely to cost $150,000+.
So Vancouver is not the most expensive place as many people say.