TOP 10 Countries by Housing Price-to-Income Ratio in Major Cities (2025)
Why housing price-to-income ratios matter in 2025
The housing price-to-income ratio is one of the simplest and most widely used indicators of affordability. It compares the price of a typical home (or square metre of an apartment) with the annual income of a typical household. When this ratio is low – historically around 3–4 years of income – middle-income families can realistically buy a home without taking on excessive debt. When the ratio climbs into double digits, even well-educated, formally employed households can be locked out of ownership for years.
This article looks at the TOP 10 countries where major-city housing is most expensive relative to local incomes around 2025. It focuses on the ratio in the largest or economically dominant city in each country – for example, Damascus, Havana, Yaoundé, Kathmandu or Hong Kong – because this is where price pressures and urban migration typically concentrate.
A high price-to-income ratio does not automatically mean a speculative bubble, but it does signal that:
- young and middle-income households struggle to buy without large inheritances or remittances;
- rental markets and informal housing often grow quickly as ownership becomes less attainable;
- the local economy may be vulnerable to corrections if prices outrun incomes for too long.
Data and methodology
There is no single global authority on city-level affordability, so this ranking combines several complementary sources:
- Numbeo – price-to-income ratios for buying a 90 m² apartment in the city centre, using local asking prices and after-tax incomes reported by residents.
- Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey – benchmarks for what constitutes “affordable”, “moderately unaffordable” and “severely unaffordable” markets.
- OECD Housing Indicators and IMF Global Housing Watch – long-run indices of price-to-income ratios to understand trends since 2015.
- World Bank, UN and other national sources – GDP per capita and income data to link affordability with broader development levels.
The ranking below uses the latest available Numbeo price-to-income ratios from 2024–2025. For some countries the newest value is a 2025 mid-year estimate, while for others it is the 2024 full-year value. All numbers are rounded and should be read as indicative, not exact point estimates, especially for conflict-affected economies where any economic statistic is uncertain.
Table 1. Top 10 countries by housing price-to-income ratio in major cities (latest 2024–2025)
| Rank | Country (major city) | Price-to-income ratio* |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Syrian Arab Republic (Damascus) | ≈ 102 |
| 2 | Cuba (Havana) | ≈ 49 |
| 3 | Cameroon (Yaoundé / Douala) | ≈ 47 |
| 4 | Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) | ≈ 43 |
| 5 | Nepal (Kathmandu) | ≈ 37 |
| 6 | Sri Lanka (Colombo) | ≈ 36 |
| 7 | Hong Kong SAR, China (Hong Kong) | ≈ 29 |
| 8 | Viet Nam (Hanoi / Ho Chi Minh City) | ≈ 27 |
| 9 | China (Tier-1 cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen) | ≈ 25 |
| 10 | Philippines (Metro Manila) | ≈ 24 |
*Estimated number of years of median after-tax household income required to buy a 90 m² apartment in the city centre at current prices, assuming full cash purchase. Thresholds above 5 are typically considered “severely unaffordable”.
What the ranking tells us about global housing stress
Even a quick glance at Table 1 shows that the least affordable big-city housing is not concentrated only in the world’s richest countries. Instead, the top of the ranking mixes lower-middle-income economies such as Syria, Cuba, Cameroon, Ethiopia or Nepal with a hyper-globalised, high-income hub like Hong Kong and fast-growing middle-income markets in East and South-East Asia.
In cities such as Damascus, Havana, Yaoundé, Addis Ababa or Kathmandu, the combination of chronic housing shortages, limited formal mortgage markets, capital controls, high construction costs and in some cases conflict or sanctions pushes prices far out of line with formal wages. At the same time, significant parts of the population work in the informal sector, where incomes are under-reported or unstable. As a result, the statistical ratio can exceed 30–40 years of formal income even when large shares of transactions are financed by remittances, diaspora savings or informal credit rather than domestic salaries.
In Hong Kong, the story is different. It is a highly financialised, high-income city with modern infrastructure, deep capital markets and international demand. Here, the price-to-income ratio stays elevated because of structural land scarcity, planning constraints and global investor demand, even though nominal GDP per capita exceeds that of most OECD members. The contrast with lower-income countries in the same table underlines that the ratio captures a tension between local incomes and capital flowing into property, whatever its origin.
Vietnam, China and the Philippines illustrate another pattern: rapid urbanisation and growth create a middle class that demands better housing, but supply in the largest cities struggles to keep up. Where land release, metro lines, zoning reform or social-housing programmes lag behind demand, even relatively new apartment stock in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen or Metro Manila trades at a premium relative to local wages.
How the price-to-income ratio has shifted since 2015
To understand how we ended up with such stretched ratios, it is useful to look at the change since around 2015 – the base year used by many international datasets. While exact city-level figures differ by source, IMF Global Housing Watch and OECD housing indicators point to three broad patterns in our TOP 10 countries:
- in several markets the ratio has risen sharply as house prices outpaced incomes;
- in a few, the ratio has been volatile, reflecting currency shocks or conflict;
- in only a small number of cases has the ratio stabilised or fallen, usually after a correction or policy tightening.
Table 2 summarises this evolution qualitatively. Instead of forcing unreliable numbers for conflict-affected or data-poor economies, it uses broad bands (for example “+40–60 %”) based on international house-price and income indices and national statistics, highlighting the direction and approximate scale of change since 2015.
Table 2. Change in housing price-to-income ratio, 2015–2024/2025 (qualitative)
| Country | 2015–2024/25 change in ratio | Summary of main drivers |
|---|---|---|
| Syrian Arab Republic | Highly volatile; overall ↑ (difficult to quantify) | Conflict, displacement and currency collapse distorted both prices and measured incomes; formal incomes lag far behind hard-currency house values in Damascus. |
| Cuba | ↑ approximately +40–60 % vs 2015 | Gradual liberalisation of private property markets, limited new supply and tight foreign-currency conditions raise the value of well-located urban stock relative to official wages. |
| Cameroon | ↑ approximately +30–50 % | Rapid urbanisation in Douala and Yaoundé, land administration bottlenecks and construction costs outpacing household income growth. |
| Ethiopia | ↑ approximately +30–50 %, with recent volatility | Strong pre-pandemic growth, state-led condominium programmes and later macro-economic stress all interact; land lease systems and limited formal mortgages keep ownership concentrated. |
| Nepal | ↑ approximately +40–70 % | Post-earthquake reconstruction, remittance-fuelled demand and restricted urban land availability drive Kathmandu prices faster than recorded incomes. |
| Sri Lanka | ↑ in the 2010s, stabilising or slightly ↓ after 2022 crisis | Years of credit-fuelled construction and tourism-linked demand raised Colombo prices; the recent economic crisis, currency depreciation and higher interest rates cooled the market, but affordability remains stretched. |
| Hong Kong SAR, China | Ratio stayed very high; modest ↓ from peak | One of the world’s most expensive markets for more than a decade; cooling measures, higher interest rates and new supply have eased the ratio slightly but not restored traditional affordability thresholds. |
| Viet Nam | ↑ approximately +30–60 % | Fast income growth and urban migration, strong investor demand for apartments and limited affordable supply in major metros have pushed the ratio steadily upwards. |
| China (Tier-1 cities) | ↑ through late 2010s; stabilisation or slight ↓ in early 2020s | Long boom driven by credit, land sales and speculative demand; recent policy tightening, “three red lines” and slower growth have flattened or slightly reduced the ratio in some big cities, but levels remain high by international standards. |
| Philippines | ↑ approximately +20–40 % | Strong demand from OFW remittances and BPO workers in Metro Manila, combined with infrastructure bottlenecks and land constraints, lifted condo prices more quickly than average wages. |
Note: Change bands are approximate and based on a combination of international house-price-to-income indices, country statistics and housing-market studies rather than a single uniform dataset. They are meant to illustrate direction and relative scale, not provide precise percentage estimates for each city.
Visualising affordability: bar and scatter charts
Charts help to see at a glance just how extreme these numbers are. In the bar chart below, each bar shows the estimated housing price-to-income ratio for the main city in our TOP 10 countries. The second chart plots the same ratio against approximate GDP per capita in current US dollars. This illustrates a key point: both low- and middle-income economies can suffer from severe housing unaffordability, albeit for different reasons.
Chart 1. Housing price-to-income ratio in major cities, TOP 10 countries
Chart 2. Price-to-income ratio vs. GDP per capita (current US$)
In Chart 2, countries towards the upper-left combine low to lower-middle incomes with very high ratios (for example, Syria, Nepal or Cameroon), while Hong Kong sits in the upper-right quadrant with both high income and very high ratios. This highlights that housing unaffordability is not just a symptom of poverty; it can also be a by-product of global capital flows, constrained land supply and policy choices in otherwise wealthy jurisdictions.
Note: GDP per capita values are approximate 2023–2024 figures in current US dollars, rounded to the nearest hundred, and are included for illustration of broad patterns rather than as exact point estimates.
Policy implications and open questions
Persistently high housing price-to-income ratios are a warning light, but the policy response depends on the local context. In lower-income countries at the top of this ranking, the priority is often to expand serviced urban land, improve property rights and support affordable, incremental construction rather than to cool speculative booms. Strengthening income data and mortgage regulation also helps avoid over-indebtedness as formal credit expands.
In richer markets like Hong Kong – and, to a lesser extent, large Chinese cities – the policy mix leans more toward planning reform, targeted taxes and macro-prudential tools. These instruments can dampen speculative demand, encourage rental and social housing, and re-balance incentives away from land as the primary store of wealth.
For all countries in the TOP 10, a common thread is the need for better, more transparent data. Household income surveys, land registries, building permits and price indices that capture both formal and informal segments are crucial to track affordability and to design interventions that do not unintentionally hurt the most vulnerable.
Sources (primary data and background)
- Numbeo – Property Price to Income Ratio by Country, 2015, 2024 and 2025 mid-year snapshots. (numbeo.com)
- Demographia – International Housing Affordability Survey, various editions. (demographia.com)
- IMF – Global Housing Watch: House Price-to-Income Ratio Around the World and related analytical work. (imf.org)
- OECD – Housing prices: price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios, analytical house price indicators. (oecd.org)
- World Bank & United Nations – World Development Indicators and National Accounts Main Aggregates for GDP per capita and income measures. (worldbank.org; data.un.org)
- National statistical offices, central banks and housing-market reports for country-specific context.
