Tauranga ranked ninth least affordable city in the world

The Tauranga housing market has ranked the region the ninth-least affordable city in the world to live in.

The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey assessed the median house price and incomes of 406 cities around the world and concluded that Tauranga, which included the Western Bay of Plenty, was "severely unaffordable".

The survey results were released today and showed Hong Kong, Sydney, and Vancouver were the three least affordable cities to live in. These were followed by Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara in the United States, Auckland, and Wingcaribee and Tweed Heads in Australia.

The survey rated middle-income housing affordability using the median house price divided by the median household income to produce a rating. Affordable ratings were ranked 3.0 and under; moderately unaffordable was 3.1 to 4.0; seriously unaffordable was 4.1 to 5.0 and severely unaffordable was 5.1 and over.

Tauranga scored 9.7.

Nationally, Tauranga came in second to Auckland (10.0) as the least affordable city followed by Hamilton (6.2), Christchurch (5.9), Wellington (5.8) and Napier-Hastings (5.7). Palmerston North (4.7) was the most affordable city in New Zealand, the survey found.

The survey results have been released each year over the past 13 years.

Last year Tauranga recorded a score of 8.1, and in 2015 it had a rating of 6.8.

The survey recorded Tauranga's median price as $591,000 compared to a median household income of $61,200.