, house prices have seen a dramatic rise over the last 15 years with the 2008 recession not
causing as marked of a dropdown as other countries.
House prices in Toronto , Canada's largest city, and Vancouver , the largest city in Western
Canada, have seen a particularly steep rise and have pushed nearby geographic areas up as well as well
as the overall national average .
Whereas the French-speaking metropolitan areas of Montreal and Quebec City and the central Prairies including
the cities of Calgary and
Edmonton in Alberta, Winnipeg
in Manitoba
show
much
more gradual growth than Canada
as a whole.
Wages in Canada have not
risen comparably with house prices . This has created a situation where as time passes housing becomes less
and less affordable for new homeowners whose buying power from income is decreased and who do
possess an existing home benefiting from the value increases.
As examples, the wages for general office support workers and for software engineers show evidence of comparative stagnation.
This effect can be amplified by geographic differences in wages in Canada, which are
not correlated to house price differences. For instance, the expensive real estate market of Vancouver
offers lower median salaries
for many professions (electricians in our example) than the cheaper real estate market of Calgary . Similar differences exist among
many professions,
with the desireability of Vancouver perhaps having a depressive effect on wages there.