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Housing affordability is improving across Canada, albeit modestly, a new report shows.
National Bank of Canada Financial Markets released its Housing Affordability Monitor report this month showing continuing improvement in affordability in the second quarter of 2024 (April to June).
It found in eight of 10 markets it tracked that mortgage payments as a percentage of income fell from the previous quarter. The two outlier markets, the report noted, were Edmonton and Calgary. Both markets saw quarter-over-quarter increases in median home prices. Those gains helped push mortgage costs, as a percentage of income, higher.
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Still, those cities remain far more affordable than Canada’s largest cities, which saw mortgage costs as a percentage of income decline. In Calgary, the average monthly mortgage payment, $3,655, represented about 46 per cent of median household income.
In Edmonton, the average monthly mortgage payment was $2,595, making up about 33 per cent of median household income.
In Vancouver, the average monthly mortgage payment is $7,181, or about 95 per cent of median income. That’s despite an improvement of one percentage point in affordability, quarter over quarter.
The average monthly mortgage payment in Toronto was $6,589, about 81 per cent of median income there. Again, affordability improved by about two percentage points from the first quarter of this year.
Hamilton saw the largest decline in income required on a percentage basis at nearly three per cent quarter over quarter. There, the average monthly mortgage payment was $5,123 or about 66 per cent of median income.
The report noted that prices increased, seasonally adjusted, on average in Canada about 0.4 per cent. Yet increases in median income (1.2 per cent) and lower mortgages, declining 11 basis points on average, helped modestly boost affordability in most cities, the study added.
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