Everyone who's complained about housing prices in and around Toronto has heard some story or other of a family member or friend who was able to secure real estate in the city back in the day for what seems like pennies compared to today's prices, often a couple of hundred thousand dollars for a detached home in a desirable area.

And though no one is expecting to pay the prices of decades past, the pace with which the cost of the average house has escalated relative to normal inflation is bonkers.

One new report really puts this into perspective, analyzing where in Canada at large a person is able to purchase a place of their own for under $200,000 — perhaps the price your parents paid for their first home, and a price that people in many cities can still pay today.

Thirty-eight of the 50 largest and most expensive hubs in Canada do not have a single home for sale under $200,000 at present. Chart from Point2Homes.com.

According to the findings from residential listing site Point2, the median price for a home in Canada is now nearly two times the median price for one in the U.S., and has spiked by 30 per cent in just two years.

The firm found that only 10 per cent of homes listed for sale nationwide are under $200k, a price point that it calls " a suitable reference point to gauge the share of what is now referred to as an affordable listing."

In Ontario the landscape is bleak, with a shockingly scarce number of homes available below this mark: 0.24 per cent in Hamilton, 0.14 per cent in Ottawa, and absolutely none in Toronto or even nearby (and less coveted) Brampton and Mississauga.

Prospective homebuyers would be hard pressed to find a listing anywhere in Ontario for $200,000, and can likely expect a home under this benchmark to need a lot of work. Graphic from Point2Homes.com.

The experts call these finds "needles in a haystack" as overall, they make up less than one per cent of available housing stock in the nation's 50 largest and thus priciest cities, of which only 12 have any listings at all for less than $200k.

Even the places that do have some listings for this price — such as Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, which topped the list of large Canadian cities with the most homes in this bracket — have high median home prices overall, which have climbed exponentially in recent years.

How median home prices in Canada have jumped ridiculously over recent years. Graph from Point2Homes.com.

Based on the data, if you're hoping to purchase an affordable home, your best bet is to immigrate to a far smaller city in Atlantic Canada or the Prairies — or keep your eyes out and fingers crossed for when prices may fall somewhat later this year as mortgage interest rates and the overall cost of living rise with inflation.