Here’s the income you need to buy a house in major Canadian cities

Homeownership may be a distant dream in Toronto and Vancouver, but in other cities around Canada, the income you need to buy a house is way more reasonable.

Mortgage brokerage Ratehub.ca has released a report that calculates the minimum annual income required to buy a home in Canada’s major cities based on real estate data from last month.

The report also factors in the changing mortgage rates, stress test rates, and house prices.

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According to Ratehub, home prices have decreased across Canada in recent months and mortgage rates are up slightly, meaning that “you need less income to qualify for the average home than you did over the summer.”

Between August and October, the income required for the average home went down by thousands in some cities.

The most extreme example is Victoria, BC, where the required income went down by $4,810 between August and October.

However, some cities remain much pricier than others. Vancouver is by far the most expensive city for owning a home, but it “is also one of the cities where home prices have declined the most substantially over the last few months.”

Here is the average income you need to buy a house in major Canadian cities as of October 2022:

• Victoria: $178,890
• Halifax: $101,750
• Vancouver: $220,700
• Edmonton: $81,600
• Hamilton: $164,800
• Toronto: $211,650
• Montreal: $105,330
• Ottawa: $127,900
• Winnipeg: $75,320
• Calgary: $106,800

All of this could mean good news for the future of home affordability.

“With the Bank of Canada signalling that the worst of the rate hikes may be behind us, there is room to be cautiously optimistic about the state of home affordability in Canada,” said Ratehub in the report.

“Falling home prices combined with relatively stable (though high) mortgage rates mean that affordability is likely to continue to improve over the remainder of 2022 and into 2023.”