What are the least and most economically accessible cities in the world?
Big cities are not generally known for being affordable. It takes a lot of money to afford and live in them.
In the map below, Visual Capitalist's Avery Koop highlights, using data from Demographia, the major cities ranked as the worst for housing affordability on a global basis.
Inaccessible housing markets
Demographia's report analyzes the affordability of middle-income housing in 94 cities across eight countries, many of which are known to have expensive housing markets:
- Australia
- Canada
- China (Hong Kong)
- Ireland
- New Zeland
- Singapore
- United Kingdom
- United States
For the 2023 report, we use Q3 2022 prices and income levels for the valuation, dividing the median home price by the gross median household income to find the median multiple for the home. So housing is a multiple of the median annual household income
For the first time in Demographia's reporting history, none of the 94 cities scored below 3.0, the threshold for being considered “affordable.” Here's a closer look at the least accessible markets in 2023:
For over a decade, Hong Kong has held the top spot as the least accessible market globally. The only city that has become less accessible year after year is Los Angeles.
In contrast, the most affordable city in the United States is Pittsburgh, with a median multiple of 3.1. If people start to get priced out of certain markets, they may start moving to these more affordable cities.
If you look wider, here are the housing market affordability scores for all eight jurisdictions considered in this report:
Again, none of these countries are considered accessible, but there is a wide range of scores within each. Hong Kong is significantly less accessible than second-placed New Zealand and third-placed Australia.
The scores of Canada, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States, however, are quite similar.
Better cities for housing market accessibility
While many people flock to big cities, as evidenced by the fact that many of the least affordable places are also among the most populous, others choose to live in places more affordable to them.
Here's a look at some of the most affordable real estate markets in the world:
City Ranking House Multiple median
1 
Pittsburgh, PA 3.1
2 Rochester, NY 3.2
3 Cleveland, OH 3.5
3 St. Louis, MO-IL 3.5
5 Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN 3.6
5 Oklahoma City, OK 3.6
7 Buffalo, NY 3.7
8 Detroit, MI 3.8
9 Louisville, KY-IN 3.9
9 Tusla, OK 3.9
11 
Edmonton, AB 4.0
11 Hartford, CT 4.0
11 Kansas City, MO-KS 4.0
14 Columbus, OH 4.1
14 Grand Rapid, MI 4.1
14 Indianapolis, IN 4.1
14 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI 4.1
14 Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 4.1
The 18 most accessible cities are in North America or Canada, but the remote one of Alberta. But a sensible person should ask themselves this question: why do properties in these cities cost so little?
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The article What are the least and most economically accessible cities in the world? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/quali-sono-le-citta-meno-e-piu-economicamente-accessibili-al-mondo/ on Sat, 30 Sep 2023 15:48:52 +0000.