Victoria home prices dip but remain out of reach for average worker
Let’s start with the good news first: home prices in Victoria have dipped. The bad? You still need to make over $160,000 a year to afford one — unless you’ve recently won the lottery.
According to Ratehub’s latest report, home prices in Victoria have softened slightly, dropping $2,300 between August and September 2024. The average price of a home now sits at $864,400.
This translates to a required household income of $164,450 to make homeownership possible. While that’s down by nearly $2,000 from August’s $166,420, it’s still far out of reach for most, with Victoria’s average salary landing at just $55,007, according to ZipRecruiter.
Ratehub
Victoria isn’t the only BC city seeing some relief, though. In Vancouver, the average home price fell by $16,200 (to $1,179,700), bringing some breathing room to buyers in Canada’s priciest real estate market.
Despite the price decrease, Vancouver homebuyers still need to earn $229,000 annually — about $5,000 less than last month — to qualify for the average home.
Ratehub’s analysis attributes improvements to the market to the Bank of Canada’s recent rate cuts. But despite these modest gains in affordability, Ratehub’s analysts caution that 2024 is unlikely to usher in a new era of housing affordability.
So, while the salary required to afford a home in Victoria has decreased, the dream of home ownership remains distant for the average household, barring a massive financial windfall or a drastic change in the market.