Auckland has lost its place as New Zealand’s most unaffordable city to Tauranga according to a major global study.
The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey showed Auckland’s improving affordability moved the city from the world’s fourth to the ninth most expensive city to buy a house out of 92 major city markets.
Auckland’s housing is not as unaffordable as it has been in previous years and eight other cities are more expensive, namely Hong Kong, Sydney, Vancouver, San Jose, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Honolulu and San Francisco.
The survey showed Tauranga residents must spend nearly nine years of their full household income to buy a house, while Aucklanders now take just over eight years to be able to buy a place.
Due to its size, Tauranga is not classified as a major housing market in the list of 92 cities, hence it does not appear ahead of Auckland on the shorter list.
Despite Auckland’s change in rankings, study author Hugh Pavletich said this country had a major problem.
“Auckland and New Zealand housing is still very much severely unaffordable,” New Zealand section co- author Hugh Pavletich said.
Auckland was the world’s fifth least affordable city in 2016 but last year it slipped to fourth place, tailing only Hong Kong, Sydney and Vancouver as having the least accessible housing market.
The 14th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covers 293 metropolitan housing markets (metropolitan areas) in nine countries (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States) for the third quarter of 2017.
A total of 92 major metropolitan markets (housing markets) — with more than 1,000,000 population — are included, including five megacities, which are defined as having more than 10,000,000 residents (Tokyo-Yokohama, New York, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Los Angeles, and London).
Check out the full survey of 293 urban markets at www.demographia.com
