By: Zoocasa

Regina is the most affordable city in Canada to buy a condo, according to a recent report by Zoocasa, with three-quarters of residents earning about $40,000, which is enough to get a foothold on the property ladder. But unless you’re in the top quartile of earners, you can forget about Vancouver condos for sale, where residents would have to make around $205,000.

That’s what this online brokerage found when they looked at 13 popular cities in Canada and analyzed the data. They took the average income of residents from Statistics Canada and compared it against the average home prices sourced from local real estate boards (assuming a 20-per-cent down payment at 3.75 per cent amortized over 30 years).

“While it may not come as a surprise that affording a single-family house is limited to the highest-income percentiles in the biggest cities, the numbers show even entry-level housing is out of reach for many in those markets. However, while the study revealed just how high the minimum income thresholds are in these urban centres, it also underscored the comparable affordability in the prairie markets,” says Penelope Graham, managing editor at Zoocasa. “Apartment purchasers will enjoy even greater affordability.”

Outside of Vancouver, Ontario remains one of the most expensive places in the country.

Toronto is the second least affordable place in which to buy a condo, with residents required to make about $125,000 to pay for a square in the sky. But even in smaller cities it’s a struggle, with only half of residents in Hamilton, London, Kitchener and Ottawa earning a high enough salary to buy a unit. Although units are cheaper in these cities, residents also make far less.

The situation gets far more friendly as you head west to the bread basket. Prairie cities have enjoyed, or suffered from, depending on your perspective, a glut of housing inventory in the last few years, which has depressed prices. At the same time, these provinces enjoy a robust economic landscape. Those two factors combined means that a condo unit, and even a single-family home, is in reach of the majority of residents.

To purchase Calgary condos, for example, it only requires an income of about $35,500, which over 75 per cent of residents earn in this oil-rich city. It’s just as affordable in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Saskatoon.

For more information on condos and affordability, check out the infographic below:

Zoocasa.com is a real estate company that combines online search tools and a full-service brokerage to empower Canadians to buy or sell their homes faster, easier and more successfully. Home buyers can browse homes across Canada on the website or the free iOS app

You may also be interested in: Families should consider heading to the 905 for bargain real estate

Writer: Danielle Kubes