Sexy cities cost more to live in than lunchbox cities but Montreal is still a pretty great bargain for a city with a bit of a swagger, according to this study.
So let's say you're a couple. You want to buy a hizznit for your shiznit. According to the numbers - you and your spouse should be making about $51,000 combined per year here in Montreal and the averagerinoo house costs $198,000, so that means if you took all of your combined Montreal working income towards the house it'd take you 3.9 years to pay it off.
The formula is called the median multiple - the median house price - divided by the median household income. Medians are the numerical equivalent of the monkey in the middle. Don't ask me why they're better than averages because a) it'd take too long to explain and b) I don't know.
If you were in Toronto earning the slightly higher average Toronto buckolas, the typiquelle couple would be taking 4.8 years to pay off their home. If you were Vancouverians the same house dealio would cost you 8.4 years of hard work.
So how do youze beat the oppression of working just to pay for your roof? Thunder Bay, baby! It's the best deal in the civilized world. If you resttled there, chances are you'd be pulling in $58,000 and getting your digs at $107,000, which means that you and honey pie would pay off your mosquito infested TB Shack after 1.8 years. They're by far the best deal known to man. If Thunder Bay is too far, Quebec City's ratio is 2.6 years, another pretty good deal.
Saguenay, St. John, St. John's Windsor and Regina - all the romance combined could fit into a pop can - but they're also places where you could pay off your house in under 2.5 years with your typical local jobs.
Plenty of other unsexy cities are cheap, Memphis, Houston, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile the swankier urban areas, Australia, Honolulu, New Zealand, LA are so far off the charts you'd better not even think of moving there.
Not sure how Australia and New Zealand count as urban areas since they are whole countries.
ReplyDeleteI just moved to Montréal from Wellington... the only city in either Australia or New Zealand which would come close to being "swanky" is Sydney...
ReplyDeleteOne common thread amongst the more expensive places - Vancouver, NZ, LA, Honolulu - is pleasant weather. Cities like Houston and Memphis are hot and places like Thunder Bay and Regin get very cold. If weather patterns changed radically, the numbers could change pretty fast.
ReplyDeleteWell, Memphis does Beale St. Who said the blues weren't sexy?
ReplyDeleteUh, me.
ReplyDeleteI've been to Memphis a twice. It's one big Taschereau Boulevard. Extreme dork stylings.
Just try walking through a parking lot there in August. The Wal Mart greeter is pratically checking your pulse.
Beale is one tiny little street that looks a bit like Crescent and that's it. Fun's over.
All those songs romanticizing the place - Honky Tonk Woman, Walking in Memphis - are done by guys who spent about 3 days maximum in the place. The reality is more Hustle & Flow.
Median values give a better indication of "typical" than the numerical average because of the Bill Gates effect.
ReplyDeleteExample: You walk into a Montreal bar, there are 50 people in it, all work at Ubisoft for $50K/year. The average salary (where you add up everybody's salary and divide by the number of people) and median salary (where you put all 50 people in a line in order of increasing salary, and pick out the salary of the person in the middle, #25) work out to be identical in that case: $50K.
But now, Bill Gates walks in (net income: about $10B/year). Work out the median salary, it's still about $50K/year. But the average salary shot up to $200M. Nobody would say $200M is the typical salary of a Montrealer.
Average values are skewed by extremes in the sample; median values are not.