The 7th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey by Performance Urban Planning has revealed that Hong Kong is by far the most unaffordable property market in the World, followed by Sydney, Vancouver and Bournemouth!

However, apart from Hong Kong, the survey only looks at property markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The survey looks at 325 different property markets in those countries, including 82 ‘major metropolitan markets’ with a population of 1m or more, and uses the ‘median multiple’ (median house price divided by gross annual median household income) to rate housing affordability.

The report classes a salary to house price ratio of 3.0 or less as affordable and anything in excess of 5.0 as severely unaffordable. Among the major metropolitan markets, there were 20 affordable major markets, which were all in the US, 25 moderately unaffordable major markets, (in Canada and the US), 13 seriously unaffordable major markets (the UK and the US) and 24 severely unaffordable major markets were principally in the United Kingdom (9), Australia (5) and the United States (5). There were also three severely unaffordable major markets in Canada, plus Hong Kong, which scored 11.4.

Average home prices in Sydney, Vancouver, Bournemouth and Melbourne all cost at least nine times median average salaries, with London currently at 7.9, San Francisco 7.2, Auckland 6.4, New York 6.1, LA 5.9, and Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool all at 5.4.

The most affordable major market was Atlanta in the US, with a median house price of $129,400 (£81,500) and an average annual salary of just over $56,000, (£35,400), giving it a median multiple of just 2.3!