A standard Toronto household can’t even afford a standard Toronto condo

A recently released report from RBC on the state of Canadian real estate has prompted the Toronto Star to direct homebuyers to Calgary, and with good reason: the numbers don’t favour Torontonians. According to the report, a median-income household in T.O. can’t even afford a standard condo. Mortgage payments, property taxes and utilities would cost 34.2 per cent of the household income and, according to a lender’s rule of thumb, no more than 32 per cent should go towards those expenses. To afford a standard condo, which the bank pegs at $321,200, a household needs to pull in $70,600. While that number is much higher than the national qualifying income of $52,000, the Big Smoke isn’t the most egregious case in the country. That honour goes to Vancouver, where a household needs to make a harrowing $80,500. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »