World’s Top 10 Costliest Housing Markets of 2022
The housing market is different everywhere. Various factors like the prestige of the city, the location, amenities, etc will determine the final price. But as we talk of the prestige and the location, here are the world’s 10 costliest housing markets that are undoubtedly breathtaking but also quite heavy on the pockets.
With these statistics, we see how difficult it has become for middle-class families to afford good housing. Over the last few years and through the pandemic, things have only gone south.
As per the 2022 Housing Affordability Report, there was a rise of 60% in housing markets that were marked “severely unaffordable”.
The graphic represents some of the costliest locations across the globe from the perspective of middle-class families. It showcases 92 cities across 8 nations. Hong Kong has been the costliest market for 12 consecutive years.
The least affordable markets
Let us understand the methodology for this article. From this, we can understand the actual meaning of the severely unaffordable markets.
For these calculations, the city’s median housing price is to be divided by the median household income.
The following table shows the scores of some of the costliest markets in the world
Hong Kong has topped this list for 12 years now. The reason behind this is the lack of supply and residential zones. These zones barely make up 7% of the land. To compare, 75% of New York land is covered in the residential zone.
Sydney earned its spot being the second costliest city recently with a score of 15.3. The CEO of the Urban Taskforce Australia, Tom Forrest, in an interview with Australia Broker, breaks it down for us by saying that the reason behind this is that the supply isn’t matching with the demand.
“Housing supply has been consistently not meeting demand in the Greater Sydney and across regional New South Wales…if you have supply consistently not meeting demand then the price will go up. That’s what happened and we’re seeing it in abundance.”
TOM FORREST, CEO OF URBAN TASKFORCE AUSTRALIA
Impact of Covid-19
The pressure of buying a house was already quite pressing on middle-class families. But with the destruction caused by covid and paired with the costs of these cities, things are absolutely disastrous for these middle-income people.
With the work-from-home culture setting in, the high-income people started focusing on suburban houses as they had no restrictions on their location. Simultaneously, the prices of materials and issues with supply chains rose thus bringing the prices of the houses up with them.
With Covid easing out, many experts believe that there are chances of witnessing a price drop.