By some measures, housing affordability is, in aggregate, the worst it has been in Canada going back to the 1980s. Below is a chart from RBC showing homeownership costs as a percentage of median household income.

The previous spike came around the early 90s, but following that, we saw 3 decades of relative affordability. In fact, for a large portion of this timeline, condo apartments look to be hovering around 1/3 of median household income. This is a common rule of thumb for measuring affordability.

Now obviously things changed pretty dramatically during the pandemic. But that time has ended and a reset is underway. New housing supply has slowed dramatically. Developers are sitting on record levels of inventory. And sellers of all shapes and sizes are clinging, as best they can, to yesterday's prices.

With so much uncertainty, it's challenging, if not impossible, to know exactly how all of this will play out in the coming years. But I suspect that, as time goes on, the above chart is going to start to mirror what we saw in the early and mid-90's. In other words, affordability is going to improve.

Yesterday, I asked this on Twitter:

And then I learned that Victoria-based Aryze is already doing it:

I was a little surprised by some of the numbers here, namely municipal fees. But that is not the point here. The point is that this is a great idea and that, judging from the comments on Twitter, many people seem to want this.

The obvious benefit is that it allows consumers to better understand where their money is going. But I also think that by showing people all of the costs that get levied on new housing, it could benefit the overall development industry.

What do you think? Should developers in Toronto adopt a similar approach? Let me know in the comments below.

Charlie Bilello shared this interesting housing chart in his weekly newsletter:

Shelter is one of the largest components of the CPI index (about a third). And at 7.9% (see above), this is the highest rate of housing inflation since 1982. However, the shelter component -- which is largely a combination of rent on a primary residences and the implicit rent that owner occupants would pay if they were renting their homes -- has historically been a lagging indicator. Apparently it has something to do with the way that it's calculated. So for this reason, the shelter CPI has only increased 14.9% since the start of 2020, whereas home prices nationally increased by about 40% and rents increased by about 20%. It's also why there appears to be a disconnect (in the above chart) with rents. All of this is to say that we might see shelter jump up a bit further as it continues to record what happened over the last few years.