Australia dominates world’s priciest cities ranking
It may come as little consolation for house hunters but Sydney has lost its seven year grip on the title of world's second least affordable housing market.
The Harbour City's current housing slump, which has pushed values down by about 9 per cent over the past year, meant it slipped to third spot on urban consultancy firm Demographia's annual global ranking of world cities.
The cities deemed less affordable than Sydney were Hong Kong and Vancouver, both of which have major land supply problems.
Melbourne was ranked fourth on the list and was followed by California cities San Jose and Los Angeles.
All of Australia's five major capitals were ranked within the top 20 most expensive housing markets with a population over one million. Adelaide was number 13, Brisbane was ranked 17 and Perth was ranked 20.
A separate ranking that also included towns and cities with a population under one million showed prices in the Sunshine Coast were actually less affordable than those in every Aussie capital apart from Sydney and Melbourne.
The Sunshine Coast was ranked eleventh on the expanded global list. The Gold Coast came in at 14th globally, while Geelong was at 22.
Sydney had held the second spot on the global list of more than 300 cities for a number of years, with city housing deemed less affordable than properties in much larger financial centres such as London and Tokyo.
Last year the typical Sydney home was 12.2 times the median household income, but the gap has fallen to 11.7 times median income this year.
A median priced Melbourne property was 9.7 times the average household income.
Housing in all of Australia's major population centres was considered unaffordable due to the gap between prices and what people earn.
Regional centres and areas such as Ballarat, Cairns and the Fraser Coast were also ranked as less affordable housing markets than New York.
Hong Kong has held the title of least affordable city for nine years.
The median property price in the Chinese city climbed to 20.9 times median household income.
CITIES WITH LEAST AFFORDABLE HOUSING (Min population 1 million)
1. Hong Kong, China
2. Vancouver, Canada
3. Sydney, Australia
4. Melbourne, Australia
5. San Jose, USA
6. Los Angeles, USA
7. Auckland, New Zealand
8. San Francisco, USA
9. Honolulu, USA
10, London, UK/ Toronto, Canada
13. Adelaide, Australia
17. Brisbane, Australia
20. Perth, Australia
