For as crazy as the American housing market has gotten, it’s even wilder up North.
That’s according to Fortune, which reports that the average house in Canada now costs nearly twice the average home in the United States.
Between 2020 and 2022 Canadian home prices have surged 30 percent — an increase described as “nothing short of stunning” by economist Robert Hogue in a report for the Royal Bank of Canada.
As of February 2022, the average Canadian home price was 816,720 Canadian dollars, or $646,809 — at nine times the average annual household income, according to Fortune.
While housing prices stateside have risen astronomically over the past two years they’ve gone at a slightly slower rate, experiencing just a 27 percent increase on average since 2020 with the average home price standing at $375,000 in March 2022.
Experts told Fortune the reasons for Canada’s housing shortage mirror that of the States’, with the pandemic reshuffling people’s housing preferences as homes became “people’s workplaces, children’s schools, and [the center of] entertainment,” according to Phil Soper, president of Canadian real estate brokerage Royal LePage.
Meanwhile, countless millennials have reached homebuying age, while baby boomers have ramped up their search for homes to age in. All while pandemic-induced supply chain delays have slowed down the construction of new housing.
The housing crunch in Canada is putting the squeeze on even the highest earners, such as Vancouver investment banker Johnny Chen, who told Fortune he’s seeing homes worth over 3 million Canadian dollars that still need substantial renovations.
“It’s hard to know how much the home will actually cost with inflation in labor and building materials, plus slow turnaround times for building permits,” he told the magazine. “Vancouver’s real estate market is a bit crazy.”
