Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities around, but also an absolute joke of a city for real estate for the past couple decades. Between allowing corporations and developers to buy up properties everywhere and just sit on them, to allowing foreign nationals to invest in our real estate, including organized crime from China, and other Asian countries.
I think NYC, LA and several other American cities have overall higher cost of living, but also have significantly higher earnings, so where Vancouver fails worst is in cost of living vs income.