While it feels like hardly anyone makes enough per year to be able to afford a down payment and mortgage on a house in Toronto, the salary required for home ownership in the city has actually gone down in the last year, even despite steep interest rate hikes.

When examining year-over-year figures in a new report, Ratehub.ca found that would-be homebuyers now need to make $3,450 less annually than they did in May 2022 thanks to the whopping $85,600 decline in the city's average home price in the same time period.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty inconsequential amount given that you'll still have to rake in a whopping $222,600 to secure a spot of your own — which is especially frustrating considering what you would need to gross in order to make the same purchase in almost any other city in Canada.

You can earn less than half of the Toronto-level paygrade to edge into the housing market in a number of the ten cities surveyed: $77,080 in Winnipeg, $81,250 in Edmonton, $107,220 in Montreal, $109,350 in Halifax and $111,350 in Calgary (and the latter two figures have actually increased over the last year).

And, though not as stark of a difference, you can also be a lower earner and still own in Ottawa, Hamilton and Victoria, which require, respectively, incomes of $130,000, $171,330 and $171,600 with current mortgage and stress test rates (all lower than last year, by $4,670, $9,520 and $7,160).

The only place that you'll have to be even more wealthy than Toronto to bear the expense of a chunk of real estate is Vancouver, where the benchmark for home ownership is having a $226,800 annual salary.

While slight drops in this affordability metric may permit a few more people to edge into the real estate market in the 6ix, the average $1,164,400 pricetag and the highest lending rates in over a decade will likely continue to be prohibitive to most who aren't rich investors.

BlogTO(June 21, 2023, Becky Robertson)