But only 16.4% of households pull in more than $100,000 annually
John Bermingham
Province
Owning a house in Greater Vancouver is fast becoming a fantasy for most first-time homebuyers.
A Greater Vancouver Regional District report on housing affordability shows that a family now needs to earn $121,921 a year to afford a single-detached house in the region. Required income levels for a townhouse or two-bedroom condo are $80,748 and $66,916, respectively.
The average income in the GVRD is $42,000 a year. Only 16.4 per cent of all households pull in more than $100,000 annually.
Greater Vancouver has the highest housing costs in Canada and the highest percentage of homeowners spending more than 30 per cent on shelter.
“It’s all supply and demand,” realtor Bob Rennie said yesterday.
“I need to see some oversupply to ease it, and there is no oversupply. Every crane downtown is 75-per-cent sold out.”
Rennie said first-time buyers must turn to family for help or install rental suites just to enter the market.
“You have to buy less accommodation to be closer to the city,” he said. “We can’t have the three-bedroom, picket-fence, three-car garage home on our incomes. You have to look at income, plus income-helpers.”
Helmut Pastrick, chief economist with the Credit Union Central of B.C., said high land costs deter labour and business migration to the GVRD — and that first-time buyers are having to choose a townhouse or condo, or a house farther out in the suburbs.
Dave Barclay, a Smithers realtor who heads the B.C. Real Estate Association, said affordability is a quality of life issue.
“Good communities need affordable housing,” he said. “It’s just not right when you’ve got a teacher teaching your children, but she can’t afford to live there.”
Demand is being driven by job growth and a strong economy, but also by a scarcity of land and higher construction costs.
The average home in Greater Vancouver now costs $573,000, a 21-per-cent increase over 2004, and 77 per cent more than five years ago. Tom Durning of the Tenant Rights Action Coalition said 500,000 people are expected to settle in the GVRD by 2021, and wants to see more secondary suites in homes to help renters squeezed by low vacancy rates.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
