Salaries & House Prices across Canada

A narrative visualization by Marco Lussetti for CS416 at UIUC

In Canada
, house prices have seen a dramatic rise over the last 15 years with the 2008 recession not causing as marked of a dropdown as other countries.
House prices in Toronto
, Canada's largest city, and Vancouver
, the largest city in Western Canada, have seen a particularly steep rise and have pushed nearby geographic areas up as well as well as the overall national average
.
Whereas the French-speaking metropolitan areas of Montreal
and Quebec City
and the central Prairies including the cities of Calgary
and Edmonton
in Alberta, Winnipeg
in Manitoba show much more gradual growth than Canada
as a whole.
Wages in Canada
have not risen comparably with house prices . This has created a situation where as time passes housing becomes less and less affordable for new homeowners whose buying power from income is decreased and who do possess an existing home benefiting from the value increases.
As examples, the wages for general office support workers
and for software engineers
show evidence of comparative stagnation.
This effect can be amplified by geographic differences in wages in Canada, which are not correlated to house price differences. For instance, the expensive real estate market of Vancouver
offers lower median salaries for many professions (electricians in our example) than the cheaper real estate market of Calgary
. Similar differences exist among many professions, with the desireability of Vancouver perhaps having a depressive effect on wages there.

To experiment with these market conditions and gauge the rising unaffordability in the Canadian real estate market, the next slide will allow you select a real estate market, create a household by selecting one or two professions, and choose the type of dwelling.

This will allow exploration of the effects of dual versus single income households, profession choices, and geographic area selection.

Some interesting real estate markets for exploration and comparison include:

  • Toronto, Canada's largest city and its economic centre
  • Montreal, Canada's second largest city but with a relatively affordable real estate market
  • Vancouver, Canada's third city and only metropolis with mild weather conditions
  • Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia and a major tourist destination
  • Winnipeg, the 6th largest city in Canada and the major centre in the middle of the country
  • Calgary, the largest city in the oil-producing region of Alberta

An additional selector allows for controlling whether the Y axis should scale to the geographic area selected, or should remain constant for all areas. Using the static Canada-wide scaling allows for direct comparison across different region, whereas choosing a dynamic scaling by area allows for additional detail and focus to be placed on the salary data.

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