The most challenging place to purchase or rent property this year is still Hong Kong, which has been listed as the least affordable for the ninth consecutive year.
According to urban planning consultancy group Demographia, the median price of properties in Hong Kong in 2018 rose to 20.9 times the average household income, from 19.4 times in the previous year. This has been steadily increasing since 2008, thereby earning it the description "severely unaffordable." The same group estimated that for a family to be able to afford a home in the city, it would have to save for 21 years without spending anything to do so.
Hong Kong is the only Asian country in the top 10 list of least affordable cities. It is followed far behind by Vancouver, which has a median property price that is 12.6 times the median household income, then by Sydney at 11.7 times, Melbourne at 9.7 times, and San Jose, California at 9.4 times, to complete the top five. The research covered 309 metropolitan areas in eight countries and reflected figures as of the third quarter of 2018.
Analysts said that while housing prices in the city are expected to go down in 2019, it's not likely that it will lose its "most expensive" status anytime soon. With the global property market experiencing just about the same fate, the movement will be uniform, so the list could be the same next year. In a report by the South China Morning Post, Prudential Brokerage associate director Alvin Cheung Chi-wai was quoted saying that a 10 to 20 percent decline in housing rates is probably the largest that can be expected but results will still remain high.
This drop will give many Hong Kong residents a chance to get their foot inside the property market, but that will be true for only a select and moneyed few. Majority of residents, who have average incomes, will still be grossly unable to buy homes of their own. This is despite the 7.2 percent drop in the price of lived-in houses over the past quarter.
The same study also listed the most affordable major housing markets, all of which are located in the US. These include Pittsburgh and Rochester, which topped the list, as well as Oklahoma, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Detroit.
