Scot Bathgate reminds of this: Remember this one regarding Demographica?
“If they’ve heard once, they’ve heard a hundred times that it takes about 10 years of average household income to buy an average home, and that this renders us the second least affordable city in the entire world, or at least the English-speaking world. The primary force lurking behind the affordability story is an annual survey by a “think tank” called Demographia that upon further investigation proves to be an arm of the Belleville, Illinois-based Wendell Cox Consultancy; Cox, it turns out, is a right-wing pundit and transportation consultant whose stated mission is to fight ideas and initiatives that attempt to moderate automobile use.
There are a couple of problems with the Demographia analysis. One is the contention that too much planning and too few freeways created the conditions for homes in Vancouver to cost more than in a Flint, Michigan, or Thunder Bay, Ontario. The other is the selective nature of the survey, which does not examine the world at all but a mere seven countries. No Africa, no South America, no continental Europe, almost no Asia-it’s the Sarah Palin view of the world. (Well, except that there’s no Russia.) And yet, despite restricting the survey to roughly seven percent of the world’s population, Cox has somehow convinced pretty much everyone that the vast majority of global cities are a lot cheaper than Vancouver.
In fact there are more thorough analyses out there. One, by the Serbia-based crowd-sourced website Numbeo.com, comes up with house-to-income ratios very similar to Demographia’s but analyzes 362 of the world’s largest cities in more than 100 countries. On Numbeo, Vancouver sits not second or even 25th, but as the 125th least affordable city in the world. Our price-to-income ratio is about one-third that of Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen and comparable to or cheaper than most other places where Chinese emigrants might reasonably expect to land.
Potboiler settings like Moscow, London, Paris, and Tokyo are up to twice as expensive, while secondary but still global cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Barcelona-the kind that join us on livability surveys-are tightly bunched around us in terms of affordability as well. Comparable American spots like Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego are a little to a lot more affordable, but prices in the U.S. recently experienced a catastrophic plunge and are now bouncing back strongly, even as ours soften. It’s clear that our perception of affordability has been coloured by living on a continent where housing is unusually inexpensive.”
I don’t get it. Is the argument that we should spend money making our cities crappier and less attractive so house prices will go down?
Agustin, Yes! In a nutshell, that’s the Cox-welian view of the world. Only he doesn’t see freeways a spending. That’s “investing.” Only transit is “spending.”
Wendel Cox thinks that the best example of a city is Houston, enough said right? I went to his presentation in Langley vs. Todd Litman. Yup Wendel Cox is wrong. So is this report.
Affordability needs to be defined as housing plus transportation costs. People are willing to pay more for housing if they don’t have to drive as much or don’t have to drive at all. They can also afford to pay more for housing if they drive less and can do with fewer or no cars per household.
The other major flaw with this “study” is that it appears as if they are using the average price in the City of Vancouver, not the whole region. They then compare it with cities like Calgary which cover a much greater area. Not even apples and oranges. More like comparing an apple to a basket of oranges.
This is just more of the BS that those neocon bozos at the Fraser Institute use to attack the Agricultural Land Reserve. Pave the farmland, and import our food from southern Chile!
Looking at the Vancouver region house prices are not that high. Of course Point grey or UEL or West van has high house prices over $1M on average, but already Marpole or east van is lower! and certainly Burnaby, Surrey , new Westminster or Langley . It is not more expensive than London or Munich or Singapore or New York or Paris or Sydney … Where prices per sq meter in decent areas are also above $10,000 or $900/sq ft .. And of course less in slummy parts of town.
I’d say: if you find your house too expensive, move further out or to a different part of BC or Canada .
An attractive city will also be expensive, namely one with jobs, harbours, ocean beaches, mountains, operas, art galleries, clean air, safety, hockey games .. Where else in the world can you skiing in the morning, wind surfing in the afternoon and going to the opera in the evening ?
Strangling land supply and triggering totally unnecessary housing bubbles is in social and economic terms grossly irresponsible.
The last 07 / 08 Great Recession (referred to outside America as the Global Financial Crisis) epicentre was California. It seems that California is well advanced in creating another one.
The 07 / 08 event had huge ramifications globally. The Chinese for example had to embark on massive fiscal expansion to counter it. And now it has a massive bubble to contend with as well, as I outline within (google search) “China Big Bubble Trouble”.
It is extremely serious. The Chinese are frantically exploring market solutions to these problems … in mainly dealing with land supply more efficiently.
The opportunity to affordable housing is a basic human right of course. Is the author of this article aware of this ? He needs to explain why he advocates housing apartheid. And too, unnecessary mortgage slavery.
It is a mystery why California is left of the Chinese Communist Party. Perhaps Californians need to go to China for “re-education” about the benefits of a market economy !
Hugh Pavletich
Co-author Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey
http://www.PerformanceUrbanPlanning.org
Christchurch
New Zealand