Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
I agree, though the math is making this option increasingly hard to justify. Even small towns in much of Canada only offer a marginal discount when compared to nearby cities, but with fewer job opportunities and a much lower earning potential. They might make sense if you're cashing out of a big city property for a cheaper small town one; but for a renter there's little upside to moving from say, Vancouver to Campbell River.
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It's a trend that's mostly appealing to older homeowners who can cash out and those at a place in their career they are able to work remotely. You can get a decent house 2 hours East of Toronto for less than $500k still - a price that's unaffordable to locals but quite appealing to someone used to Toronto prices and has the means. Rentals in these areas aren't considerably cheaper than the City though, especially when taking into account wages - the big difference is you can get a lot more space. Not exactly appealing to younger people who want what the city offers though.
I feel pretty good about our purchase in Napanee for just over $400k despite the amount of work I've had to put into it, though probably not a great thing in the macro sense. Anecdotally there's a growing trend of Torontonians purchasing houses in the area, which most locals see (rightly IMO) as a double-edged sword. Our neighbours are very happy we're fixing up the place and mostly using it for ourselves (even though we are only there about 1/3rd of each month). But also concerned about investment driving up property costs and the dwindling rental stock. Interestingly there's a bunch of infill in our neighbourhood on empty lots and severances of formerly combined lots - almost all of these are rentals owned by an investment company based out of Kingston.
The dearth of relatively affordable places those in our age cohort were able to get in Toronto as recently as the late 2010s is very concerning for the type of creativity that they foster. Giallo mentioned the music scene above - while it's actually going very strong in Toronto right now it's interesting that the younger bands our friend manages are based out of places like Hamilton or Oshawa with at least some members living at home with parents still. In the past they would be more likely to have a shitty (but cheap!) apartment in Toronto's West End.