Canada's housing and cost-of-living crisis is getting out of hand, and people in major cities are ready to make sacrifices to live somewhere more affordable.
Royal LePage recently surveyed Canadians living in the greater regions of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and noted that 50 per cent of respondents said they would consider buying a property in one of Canada's most affordable Canadian cities if they could find a job or work remotely. These cities' affordability factor is based on the percentage of income required to service a monthly mortgage payment, using Statistics Canada 2022 provincial median total income of economic families and persons not in an economic family, and city-level aggregate home price data from Royal LePage's Q1 2024 House Price Survey.
In Red Deer, the aggregate home price in Q1 was $392,900. With a monthly mortgage payment of about $2,050, the affordability factor is a still-sweet 25.7 per cent. Quebec City and Sherbrooke are the same in terms of the affordability factor — 30.8 per cent. The only real difference is the aggregate home price, which is just $100 higher in Sherbrooke than in Quebec City.It doesn't look like any B.C. city can be called"affordable" anymore. None appeared on the list.