Yet another report highlights Vancouver home ownership as beyond the reach of many

A new report about Vancouver real estate presents a conclusion most people reading this already know: the price of a single-detached home in this city is now so high, ownership is increasingly a dream only obtainable for the rich.

“The Vancouver area emerged as the hottest housing market in the country in 2015,” reads the report by the Royal Bank of Canada. “Home resales soared by 28% to a new record high (more than 43,000 units), and prices jumped 11%, both representing the strongest gains anywhere in Canada.”

The report is a national look at housing across Canada. One section on Vancouver is worth quoting in its entirety.

Much of Vancouver’s heat is concentrated in the single-detached home segments, where supply clearly falls well short of demand and prices increase the fastest (nearly 18% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2015 or triple the rate of 6% for condo apartments). With an average price exceeding $1.2 million, single-detached homes have long since slipped out of reach for the average local homebuyer. RBC’s measure for this category—which is based on the median income of Vancouver-area households—reached an astounding 109.0% in the fourth quarter of 2015, which was up by 4.3 percentage points from the previous quarter. This implies that only a select few wealthy households can afford to own such properties at market prices. Condo apartments, on the other hand, remain comparatively more affordable—with a measure of 44.1%—and, therefore, cater to a broader base of local buyers. Indeed, condo apartments claimed the highest share of existing home sales in the area in 2015 (42% of total). Given the extremely tight demand-supply conditions currently in place, affordability-related pressures are unlikely to subside anytime soon in the area.

An accompanying graph shows the price of a single-detached home continues to  climb well above the rate at which costs are increasing for condo units.