Sabah's houses are the most expensive homes in Malaysia, according to the studies done by PKR-powered think tank Institut Rakyat, as reported in TheMalaysianInsider.com.

Citing official data from the fourth quarter of 2012, Institut Rakyat Executive Director Yin Shao Loong said that homes in Sabah were twice as unaffordable than the national average of RM251,731. He also said that the average home in this state costing 11 times more than a family's median annual income of RM34,320.

He added that Sarawak and Kuala Lumpur followed suit. "In Sarawak, the average housing price is RM330,594, but median annual household income is only RM36,564" he explained. "Sabah and Sarawak suffer from a combination of weak household incomes and house prices that are far higher than the national average, with average prices comparable to Selangor," he said in a statement recently.

Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur, the average housing price is RM576,991, but median annual household income in the capital city is only RM70,164 or RM5,847 a month.

Given that information, housing that costs more than three times the annual income of the median household is considered unaffordable.

Yin said by the end of 2012, the average house price was 5.79 times the annual income of the median Malaysian household. "However, by the first half of this year, the national housing affordability index improved slightly to 5.52. But, by international standards, this makes Malaysian housing severely unaffordable" he further added.

Using the same data, Yin said the median household income in the first half of this year was RM4,248 monthly. Therefore he said an affordable house for a middle-income household should be priced at RM153,000 and below.

The house should be at least 800 sq ft with three bedrooms, but he added that such homes are in short supply.

He said the average house price has more than doubled from 2000 to early this year, and while this is good news for homeowners who can enjoy higher values for their properties, there are still 27.2% of Malaysian households who do not own homes.