SF a condo might be 1M, but getting paid 250k+ for a job is fairly common.
In Toronto the condo might be 1M (CAD), but getting paid 250k+ CAD is not common.
By all accounts Toronto is more expensive than SF
Also, interest rates are 1% lower in Canada (albeit on shorter terms), and property taxes are roughly half.
This isn’t to say that homes are “cheap”, but there’s more to the story.
(Aside, I have lived in both cities for a considerable number of years.)
No doubt, there's also a great deal of greed and wealth signaling from the general population (especially among upper middle class) as well. Competition around high ranking school areas comes to mind. Not to mention rental properties are pretty much the go-to choice of passive income building that most people go for.
I would bet that if multiple property ownership was penalized by high taxes, real estate prices would come down real fast.
If you're in tech of course. SF and Toronto have many other professionals living in. How's the median salaries comparing?
Yes, the numbers in that first link are in the context of expats. But even with remote work likely becoming more common, it's more meaningful in general to think about cost of living with respect to local salaries because that's what people living in a city are earning.
So, I'm not going to look into different methodologies that are used, but Toronto is often ranked near the top of least affordable cities.
For example: http://demographia.com/dhi.pdf
When the only factor is home ownership, which is the focus of URI's study, this is absolutely correct. But then I think back to how absolutely unaffordable housing was across the GTA in the late 80s, after which point people were able to buy back in again when the housing market corrected 40% in most of the GTA, with certain areas of Toronto (not the GTA) dropping by over 50%.
Homeowners generally want housing prices to rise indefinitely, but this is in direct opposition to younger cohorts wanting affordable entry points to home ownership.
The URI study also doesn't mention anything about renting. There are rumbles that Toronto developers have built too many properties (condos primarily), so perhaps an oversupply will benefit both renters and potential homebuyers if/when property prices correct.
If housing is expensive it's because there aren't enough houses or the land is too expensive, and it's true that much of this is due to zoning and similar restrictions like parking minimums.
Toronto was ranked as the 98th most expensive city in the world; not even in the top 50, even though it's the 4th largest city in North America.
Perhaps it's more accurate to say that Toronto and Vancouver are unaffordable and expensive cities for domestic Canadians to live in.
>>Our debt to GDP is out of control. Our federal government keeps borrowing and spending on things that are completely inneffective (and bragging they spent the most than any other country). My gloom and doom prediction is our currency is going to be absolutely worthless in two years time.
Canada's debt-to-GDP is 88%[2], but the USA's debt-to-GDP is 127%[3] and climbing. You remember the ol' saying: when America sneezes, Canada catches a cold. The largest destabilizing factor to Canada's economy is likely to be problems with their largest trading partner.
[1] https://www.mercer.com/newsroom/2020-cost-of-living.html
[2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-nat...
[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S