It takes four decades to save house down payment in Vancouver

There’s a little good news when it comes to housing affordability in Vancouver — but just a little.

The National Bank of Canada says housing affordability for the Greater Vancouver region improved slightly in the first few months of this year.

“The quarterly improvement stems from a 3.1% decline in home prices in the quarter combined with a 0.9% increase in income and a slight decrease in interest rates,” the bank’s latest Housing Affordability Monitor said, which shows the improvement happened at the fastest clip since early 2019.

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But, to put it in perspective, the report says Vancouver remains the least affordable urban area in Canada for buying a home, with home buyers paying an 89.9 per cent premium compared to the national urban composite.

The price of what the report calls a “representative non-condo home” in the metropolitan market was $1,587,439 in the first quarter of 2023.

The average household income needed to afford that home is $322,245.

At that income, the number of months needed to save for a down payment, at a saving rate of 10 per cent, is 454 months — or just under 38 years.

The figures are more reasonable for condominiums in Greater Vancouver, but still very expensive. With a representative condo priced at $721,230, an annual household income of $171,052 is needed to afford it, and 67 months, or just over five and a half years, of saving for a down payment.

The National Bank calculates a non-condo mortgage payment is actually 126% of the typical income for the region, down slightly from the previous quarter.

A typical condo payment in Vancouver represents 57 per cent of income, also down slightly.