City:

State:

Title Insurance / Entitled Direct Insurance
ZIP:

Type of Transaction:
Refinancing Your Home?
Buying a Home?
Selling a Home?
Purchase Amount

Loan Amount
If Applicable

Have Questions? Call Us at
1-877-936-8485


  1. You will buy title insurance every time you buy or refinance a home and borrow money. Your savings are magnified whenever you refinance through ENTITLE DIRECT.


  2. For the first time, you can choose your own title insurance company and review important documents prior to closing, including sample documents. This will reduce your
    closing anxiety.


  3. You can take control of your own closing with our industry-first Control Panel.


  4. Federal and state governments have long criticized the title insurance industry.
    ENTITLE DIRECT responded.



ENTITLE DIRECT > Title Insurance Knowledge > New report describes housing affordability at global level

New report describes housing affordability at global level

01/25/2012
A new study has been released that provides insight on which countries have some of the most expensive and affordable housing markets in the world.

Conducted by Performance Urban Planning, the 8th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey details 325 urban markets in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

One of the study's authors, Robert Bruegmann, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, described why assessing housing affordability is so important.

"Nothing in the world today affects citizens more directly than the home in which they
live," said Bruegmann. "And when it comes to housing no piece of recent research opens more interesting avenues of investigation than the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey."

In order to arrive at the results, the report based affordability on the median house price of the urban market analyzed divided by the gross annual median household income of each specific region in the third quarter of 2011. If housing values were more than three times the average annual household income earnings for the region, it was an indication housing affordability was low. For instance, in the U.S., of the 211 urban markets analyzed, 117 were considered affordable. The report singled out Florida as a state in which affordability had improved given recent policy changes made.

Thanks in part to low closing costs and mortgage rates, the report attributed the Sunshine State's housing affordability to initiatives passed by legislators, which were aimed at improving the real estate sector following the housing collapse.

At the opposite end of the spectrum were markets deemed unaffordable, the chief of which was Hong Kong, as median household prices were nearly 13 times more than gross annual median household income levels, the report found.

Yet despite the high cost of homeownership in Hong Kong, the study pinpointed Australia as having the most pervasive housing affordability issue given its significant land area.

New Zealand was also deemed to have a costly homebuying market, which was compounded when the city of Christchurch was struck by a significant earthquake in September 2010. Since that time, the area has experienced more than 9,500 aftershocks, often preventing builders from their construction projects, the report found.

"Policymakers, researchers and media internationally, need to research the Christchurch situation … to ensure other urban markets going forward, have the resilience, flexibility and affordable housing, so that they better cope with adversity," the report stated.