4 of the Most ‘Impossibly Unaffordable’ Places to Live Are in California

“Impossibly unaffordable” are two words that Californians are probably less than thrilled to hear. In a recent report from Chapman University in Orange, California, and the Frontier Centre of Public Policy (FCPP) in Canada, that’s exactly how four California metros are described. The 2024 edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability shows San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego listed among the top 10 least affordable housing markets—not just in the United States, but worldwide. 

The report assessed 94 major markets across Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It evaluated each metro’s median house price-to-household income ratio to get the median multiple, and the scoring system categorized metros into five groups: affordable (3.0 and below), moderately unaffordable (3.1 to 4.0), seriously unaffordable (4.1 to 5.0), severely unaffordable (5.1 to 8.9), and impossibly unaffordable (9.0 and above).

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Hong Kong topped the list, and San Jose was ranked number four, making it the most “impossibly unaffordable” metro in the United States. Here’s the full list:

1. Hong Kong, China
2. Sydney, New South Wales
3. Vancouver, British Columbia
4. San Jose, California
5. Los Angeles, California
6. Honolulu, Hawaii
7. Melbourne, Victoria
8. San Francisco, California
9. Adelaide, South Australia
10. San Diego, California

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By comparison, these are the most affordable markets in the world, and all but one are located in the Midwest and Northeast of the United States:

1. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
2. Rochester, New York
3. St. Louis, Missouri
4. Cleveland, Ohio
5. Edmonton, Alberta
6. Buffalo, New York
7. Detroit, Michigan
8. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
9. Cincinnati, Ohio
10. Louisville, Kentucky

Overall, the United States scored a median multiple of 4.8, a significant jump from the pre-COVID-19 pandemic score of 3.9 from 2019. The report states that many people moving to “suburban, exurban and even more remote areas” amid the pandemic has contributed to the higher score, since that ultimately increased housing prices. Plus, the number of work-from-home hours is four times more than in 2019.