The cost of owning a home hit its highest level since 1990 in the latest quarter, according to a report released today by RBC Economics.

The bank says a long upward trend in house prices driven by a strong economy that has seen growth in the job market is to blame.

The affordability study, which measures how much pretax household income it takes to own a home, found that condos are the cheapest, needing 30% of pretax income.

A townhouse takes about 34.5%, a detached bungalow 42.5% while a standard two-storey home required 48% of pretax income.

Those costs rose everywhere in the country except in Alberta, where the cooling housing market saw costs of owning a home drop in all categories.

On the bright side, the report says dropping mortgage rates, slower gains in house prices and income growth should improved affordability across most markets.

The report also presents a comparison of Canadian and U.S. household finances, and shows that Americans are still modestly richer, but much more heavily leveraged and further in debt with less liquidity than Canadians. That, in turn, makes them more vulnerable to ongoing credit market turmoil and risks towards house prices than Canadians.

The report says the sharp depreciation in the U.S. dollar over the past six years has made Canadians relatively richer over time, by raising the value of what their wealth will buy in world markets compared to that of their American counterparts.