Many cities around the world have become very expensive to buy a home in, but which ones are the absolute most unattainable?

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist' Marcus Lu highlights a number of housing markets that are deemed to be “impossibly unaffordable” in 2024, ranked by their median price-to-income ratio.

This data comes from the Demographia International Housing Affordability Report, which is produced by the Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy.

The median price-to-income ratio compares median house price to median household income within each market. A higher ratio (higher prices relative to incomes) means a city is less affordable.

See the following table for all of the data we used to create this graphic. Note that this analysis covers 94 markets across eight countries: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

According to the Demographia report, cities with a median price-to-income ratio of over 9.0 are considered “impossibly unaffordable”.

We can see that the top city in this ranking, Hong Kong, has a ratio of 16.7. This means that the median price of a home is 16.7 times greater than the median income.

On the flipside, here are the top 12 most affordable cities that were analyzed in the Demographia report.

Cities with a median price-to-income ratio of less than 3.0 are considered “affordable”, while those between 3.1 and 4.0 are considered “moderately unaffordable”.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Ranked: The Most Valuable Housing Markets in America.