Categories: Lifestyle

Vancouver named one of the most expensive cities in the world to build a home

Photo via Shutterstock

Well, folks, it appears we’ve hit the trifecta of unaffordable housing. Not only is Vancouver right up there for rentals and average home cost, but a new report has found that the city is one of the most expensive places in the world to even build a home. Darn, we thought we had a back pocket loophole there for a second.

The info comes from the UK-based finance company Capital on Tap. Rather than focus on land costs or average home prices, they went into an even more niche angle- the cost of merely building a home. In order to create the list, they looked at a number of factors, including “demand for materials, availability of space, and availability of labour.”

Image via Capital on Tap

And, with an average price per square metre of £1,870 ($3,181 CAD), Vancouver managed to land in the 9th spot worldwide, just behind Toronto (which was £1,879/m²). But, things get a little zanier once the average home size is factored in, because in that case, Vancouver shoots up to the third spot worldwide. On that metric, we’re only behind two of America’s most expensive cities- New York and San Francisco.

The final kick in the pants for us? This list doesn’t even bother to deal with the cost of getting the land. Which, as we have seen from teardown properties getting sold for millions of dollars, ain’t going to come cheap either. Yeah, maybe it’s time we go back to our roundup of cheapest places in BC to buy a home right now. That’s more our speed.

Either way, this is a crazy new bit of real estate information to come out about our city. After all, we gotta know what’s going on if we’re trying to figure out what the future of the city’s housing market might look like. We’ll be honest though, we’re not loving what we’re seeing.