4 California cities, including LA, rank among world's 'impossibly unaffordable' housing markets

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LOS ANGELES - It isn’t news to anyone that living in California comes with a hefty price tag on a national scale—but how does it compare to other cities across the globe? 

A study conducted by researchers at Chapman University in Orange County and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian think tank, looked at housing affordability ratings for 95 markets in eight countries.

Ranking markets from ‘affordable’ to ‘impossibly unaffordable’

What we know:

Joel Kotkin, the director of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University, described the report's findings as "disastrous, at least for potential homebuyers," using the United Kingdom, the entire U.S. West Coast, Colorado, Australia, and most of Canada as examples.

"High housing prices, relative to incomes, are having a distinctly feudalizing impact on our home state of California, where the primary victims are young people, minorities, and immigrants," Kotkin added. The markets were rated from "affordable" to "impossibly unaffordable," giving a grim look at California markets, with four markets in the red zone.

By the numbers:

(Getty Images)

Overall, not a single market in the entire study earned an affordable rating. In the U.S., 21 markets were considered "seriously unaffordable," 20 fell into "severely unaffordable" territory, while five ranked as "impossibly unaffordable."

The housing markets deemed "impossibly unaffordable" in the Demographia International Housing Affordability in 2024 study are as follows, including their house price-to-income ratios:

• Hong Kong: 14.4
• Sydney: 13.8
• San Jose: 13.8
• Vancouver: 11.8
• Los Angeles: 11.2
• Adelaide: 10.9
• Honolulu: 10.8
• San Francisco: 10.0
• Melbourne: 9.7
• San Diego: 9.5
• Brisbane: 9.3
• London: 9.1

The Inland Empire didn’t fare much better, with San Bernardino and Riverside counties considered "severely unaffordable," as well as nearby markets such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tucson.

Conversely, the most affordable markets were:

• Pittsburgh
• Cleveland
• St. Louis
• Rochester

Grim look for middle-income households

Dig deeper:

The study gives an alarming outlook for middle-income households. 

"Among high-income nations, middle-income homeownership was once widespread, with housing prices aligned with incomes. Since the 1990s, however, prices have surged," researchers said. 

The study went on to explain the "shift is linked to the international planning orthodoxy, which restricts urban expansion through greenbelts, urban growth boundaries, rural zoning, and compact city policies."

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