Hong Kong has emerged as the world’s most “impossibly unaffordable” city in 2024, according to the Demographia International Housing Affordability report.
The report, released in June, ranks Sydney in second place and Vancouver a close third. Hong Kong is the only Asian city in the top ten. On the flip side, Singapore, the only other Asian market considered in the survey, ranks as the 11th most affordable city. This year’s rankings were based on survey results from 94 major markets across eight countries in the third quarter of 2023.
Hong Kong is the only housing market in China considered in the study; the countries surveyed are overwhelmingly from the Anglosphere. The report measures housing affordability using the median multiple, which is obtained by dividing the median house price by the median household income in the same market.
Markets are then categorised based on their median multiple into five groups: affordable (3.0 and under), moderately unaffordable (3.1 to 4.0), seriously unaffordable (4.1 to 5.0), severely unaffordable (5.1 to 8.9) and impossibly unaffordable (9.0 and over).
