A real estate sold sign is shown outside a house in Vancouver, on Jan.3, 2017.Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press
An annual international survey rates Vancouver as the third least affordable housing market on the planet and it also has a warning about Toronto housing.
The 2017 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey gives Vancouver a rating of 11.8, meaning median home prices are 11.8 times higher than median household income.
Only Hong Kong, with a rating of 18.1, and Sydney, Australia, at 12.2, outstrip Vancouver.
Demographia says housing markets are affordable when median prices are no more than three times higher than median household income.
The 2017 survey ranks 406 markets in nine nations and puts Toronto at 28th on the list with a ranking of 7.7.
Demographia says Toronto posted a year-on-year home-price increase equal to a year of household income and it says soaring house prices will undermine the city's recent best-city rating from The Economist Intelligence Unit.
Other cities on the top 10 unaffordable list include Auckland, where prices are 10 times above median income, followed by San Jose, Calif., Melbourne, Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the southwestern England region of Bournemouth and Dorset.
A new real estate report from Royal LePage analyzing trends in the last quarter of 2016 suggests that the GTA will become the hottest housing market in the country in 2017, surpassing Vancouver.