House prices in the Capital region went up by 10 per cent over the last year, according to a VanCity report released Tuesday.
The increase, recorded between February 2016 and February of this year, signalled that the south Island isn’t immune to B.C.’s hot real estate market.
The report compared median household income – $90,361 in the Greater Victoria area– with housing prices for apartments, townhouses and detached homes to determine how much of a household’s income goes towards mortgages, property taxes and maintenance.
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While housing prices rose all around the region, some communities saw median incomes high enough to offset housing costs.
Homeowners in Oak Bay were the worst off of all Vancouver Island cities; on average, 62.5 per cent of their income went towards housing costs. North Saanich was a distant second with 47.9 per cent of median income going towards house costs.
On the positive end of the scale, Sooke homeowners spent only 24.2 per cent of their income on housing, Victoria homeowners only 25.7 per cent, Esquimalt owners only 26.9 per cent and Sidney owners only 29.6 per cent.