Fort St. John named most affordable small city in B.C.

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Fort St. John is the most affordable small city in British Columbia and the second most affordable city in the province, according to Zolo.

Zolo, an independent real estate marketplace, offers real-time trends and has a blog that publishes statistics and news on the housing market across Canada.

The company found the average home price to be $537,000 and the average household income to be $119,700, making the home price-to-income ratio 6.39.

Fort St. John has a 6.8 per cent unemployment rate, which is 1.8 per cent higher than the national average in December.

Zolo said Fort St. John also has over 300 sunny days per year and one of the highest average household incomes in British Columbia.

The company compiled the most affordable cities list by analyzing 26 cities across the province, grouping them by city size and ranking them based on a small list of criteria.

Small cities were under 30,000 people, medium cities had between 30,000 and 100,000 people, and large cities had a population of over 100,000.

The first standard Zolo considered was housing affordability by comparing home sale prices to average annual income, resulting in the home price-to-income ratio, which shows how long it would take to pay off the property.

The economic strength of each city was also taken into account by Zolo, which the company did by gathering unemployment rates.

Finally, Zolo looked at population growth as an indicator of the city being desirable to live in.

According to the listing, the most affordable place to live overall in B.C. is in Prince George.