Not that people need another reminder, but Denver ranks among the North American cities that are “seriously unaffordable,” according to a new report from Point2Homes, a real estate search portal.
Point2Homes divided the median home price by the median family income in 54 large cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Denver’s affordability ratio of 6.6 was the 14th highest in the United States and 18th highest in North America.
Among the areas with an affordability ratio similar to Denver’s were Dallas, the Bronx borough of New York and Portland, Ore.
The undisputed leader when it came to a lack of affordability was Vancouver at 17.3. That was worse than Manhattan, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Boston and San Jose, Calif.
How did Vancouver get to be so expensive? The report notes that foreign buyers have driven up the median home price to $1.1 million, far beyond what a family earning the median income of $63,944 could ever hope to support.
While Denver isn’t a top destination for foreign money, it is growing in popularity, especially among investors from Korea and Germany, according to a real estate panel hosted Monday by the University of Colorado Boulder.
Foreign investors aren’t as focused on earning a return as they are on finding a safe place to put their funds. But that distorts prices and has reduced the return that hometown developers can make without taking on additional risks.
