A List Of The World's Most Affordable Cities Include Some In Canada & How's That Possible?

A new study has found the world's most affordable cities and, somehow, a bunch of Canadian cities made the list. With one Canuck metropolis even making it into the global top five!

Put together by the Urban Reform Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, the report has calculated the affordability of 92 cities from around the world using something called a "median multiple."

Without getting too in-depth, a media multiple is a ratio worked out by taking the median house price and dividing it by the gross median household income.

Using this metric, the top most affordable city in Canada was none other than Edmonton, Alberta, which tied for fourth place with the U.S. city of St. Louis.

Both had median multiples of 3.3. The next Canadian city that ranked was also in Alberta, as Calgary snatched the number ten slot with a score of 4.0.

But, Canada obviously isn't all affordable. Any Canadian would tell you that. So it should come as no surprise that Vancouver was in the bottom three most affordable cities in the world.

With a score of 13.3, it only beat out two other places — Sydney, Australia, and Hong Kong. Another piece of bad affordability news for Vancouver!

Other cities that made the list include Ottawa-Gatineau (5.6), Montreal (6.1), and Toronto (10.5).

Topping the list of most affordable cities in the world is the American city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a median multiple of 2.7.

And the least affordable city included was the aforementioned Hong Kong, clocking in a median multiple of 23.2.

So, for folks looking for more affordable housing, a move out to Edmonton might be the thing to do!