VANCOUVER — It’s getting harder to buy a home in B.C. as an increasingly hot real estate market pushes prices higher, according to an RBC report on housing affordability released this morning.

According to the report, B.C. and Vancouver posted the biggest increases by far across Canada in the RBC index measures.

“The cost of home ownership in B.C. increased in the third quarter following five consecutive declines — cumulatively the steepest drop since the early 1990s,” the report by RBC Economics Research concluded. “Notable rises in home prices in the province’s large urban centres and the modest pick-up in mortgage rates have boosted typical mortgage payments for the first time since early 2008.”

Nationally, the report concludes that the cost of homeownership in Canada became more expensive for the first time since the spring of 2008 across all housing segments, according to the latest housing report released today by RBC Economics Research.

“Home affordability deteriorated in all provinces and major markets in Canada due to a slight rise in key mortgage rates and appreciation in property values,” RBC senior economist Robert Hogue said in a statement. “Despite this increase in homeownership costs, affordability measures have still shown improvement from a year ago.”

The report says the rally in the B.C. housing market since the lows reached in early 2009 “is now running up faster relative to the supply of homes available for sale — which was widely outstripping demand as recently as this spring — and has led to a firming trend in prices since summer.”

It said these factors have contributed to rises in RBC’s affordability measures of between 1.2 and 2.9 percentage points in the third quarter.

“As this development likely marks the end of the affordability restoration phase in the province, it appears that the cost of homeownership will remain well above long-term averages in B.C. This might emerge as a risk factor going forward.”

For Vancouver, the report’s conclusions were even more striking.

“The Vancouver housing market continues to roar back in a spectacular way and property prices are now heating up closer and closer to a boil,” the report says. “Resale activity has surged since spring and the rebound has more than fully reversed the dramatic drop that occurred in 2008. The concomitant rise in the number of units available for sale has been more subdued, which has considerably tightened the market. In fact, the ratio of sales to new listings has returned to levels last seen in 2005 and early 2006 when prices were rising at a double-digit annual pace.

“This near-frenzied tone to the market is occurring despite still historically poor, and now deteriorating, levels of affordability. In the third quarter, RBC’s affordability measures for Vancouver worsened for the first time since early 2008, rising between 1.7 and 4.3 percentage points. These increases were, in fact, the biggest among major cities in Canada. Even though the affordability measures fell substantially during 2008 and early 2009, they remain well above long-term averages.”

bmorton@vancouversun.com