
“In the third quarter, provincial home resales and housing starts picked up some steam, reaching their highest levels in more than a year,” said Robert Hogue, a senior economist with RBC. “This renewed demand for Alberta’s housing was partly a result of being an easily affordable market – in fact, the most affordable in Canada.”
RBC’s housing affordability measures for Alberta – which capture the province’s proportion of pre-tax household income needed to service the costs of owning a home at market values – have remained the lowest among the provinces, said the report.
According to the index, the higher the reading, the less affordable it becomes to own a home.
For example, an affordability reading of 50% means that home-ownership costs, including mortgage payments, utilities and property taxes, take up 50% of a typical household's monthly pre-tax income.
For Calgary, the affordability measures and year-over-year change were: bungalow, 37.6 per cent (down 0.4%); two storey, 38.2 per cent (down 0.7%); and condo, 23.2 per cent (down 0.1%).
The index in Vancouver stands at 90.6%, Toronto 52.1% and Montreal 40.9%.
Read More in the Calgary Herald.
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