Why is York Region so expensive?

[Docere]

Taking up a bit of a drift from another thread.

York Region is the most expensive in terms of housing among Toronto's "regions"; I believe Richmond Hill is the most expensive of the GTA municipalities. Yet it doesn't have Oakville "prestige" or incomes; on paper southern York region appears to have Pickering-like incomes with Oakville-like housing prices (of course the aggregate "person" rarely exists).

One reason suggested for the disparity is that people in York are more flashy but heavily in debt. Durham Region in contrast has a lot of unionized blue collar city workers with good incomes.

You can see in the stats though that in terms of occupations and income, York/Halton and Richmond Hill/Oakville are similar.

A likely possibility too is that York has a lot of immigrant wealth (and more multigenerational and extended households etc.) that hasn't yet translated into high Canadian incomes. There may also be a bit of a premium to live in an ethnic enclave (Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Iranian etc.) York may have more rental and low income housing available than Halton and Durham.

One caveat that was also pointed out is that while southern York may have higher housing prices than the city of Toronto, it is cheaperr than much of North York to which it is adjacent.

[Docere]

In some ways, York is the GTA's New Jersey to Halton's Connecticut.

New Jersey has more immigrant, ethnic and techie wealth, while Connecticut is more WASPy and appeals to bankers.

[Innsertnamehere]

There is very little lower income housing in York region. Peel and Durham have the most.

But yea, York region is expensive because it's overwhelmingly large houses and a lot of immigrant money. It is also very central in the GTA meaning you can access almost the entire job market.

I find Vaughan and Richmond hill to be more expensive that huge swaths of Toronto including much of the old city. There is plenty of detached housing stock in Toronto for under a million as starting homes, and very, very little of that in Vaughan.

Northern York Region returns to sanity though. Newmarket has surprisingly reasonable house prices, but anywhere south (Aurora, king city) and you are paying through your nose.

[Docere]

Vaughan is more expensive than Dufferin and St. Clair and most of the borough of York, yes.

Italians moved out of that area and into Vaughan was because they got wealthier, not because they "cashed out."

[memph]

Originally Posted by Docere

Vaughan is more expensive than Dufferin and St. Clair and most of the borough of York, yes.

Italians moved out of that area and into Vaughan was because they got wealthier, not because they "cashed out."

I'm not convinced that there's much of a difference between Dufferin-St Clair and Vaughan when you adjust for housing sizes though. I would even say Vaughan is a bit cheaper.

https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/S...alia-Davenport
https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/S...ellore-Village
https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/S...ellore-Village

The Vaughan house definitely looks bigger than the one on Caledonia Rd, despite being for sale for $10k less.

[Docere]

Maybe, but the houses are generally a lot bigger in Vaughan.

I don't think anybody decided to move to Vaughan on the grounds that Corso Italia and Caledonia are too expensive.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Northern York Region returns to sanity though. Newmarket has surprisingly reasonable house prices, but anywhere south (Aurora, king city) and you are paying through your nose.

Another possibility is that maybe people in Aurora and Newmarket or Oakville or Burlington (more anglo Canadian) are more likely to have cottages than people in southern York region.

The "going to the cottage" phenomenon seems to be more of an anglo Canadian (and Jewish) thing, in my experience.

[manny_santos]

Virtually everyone I've ever known who lives in York Region is extremely wealthy and has endless money to throw around. Several of my coworkers are from there and they have no idea what it's like to worry about budgeting, as their parents provide them with everything they need.

Newmarket and Vaughan do have low-income and even homeless populations, but they are far less obvious than they are in Toronto.

[Docere]

The wealthiest family (one of the GTA's biggest land developers) I know lives in Vaughan. So yeah, there certainly is a lot of money there in certain pockets.

[Innsertnamehere]

half of the GTA's development industry is based out of Vaughan.

And agreed on the cottage being an Aglo Canadian thing. There is a ton of minority wealth in Toronto allowing minorities to own cottages, but when you visit Huntsville in July its as white as a french flag of surrender. Minorities appear to tend to spend it on real estate within the GTA. Minorities buy a $1.2 million home in Markham, anglo's of the same income seem more likely to drop $800,000 on a home in Newmarket and $400,000 on a cottage in Haliburton.

[Loco101]

Interesting how you see cottages as an "anglo" thing.

I live in Northern Ontario and cottages (also known as camps here) are popular with anglophones and francophones. Also a lot of people from Italian background have them here. And we do have quite a few people with Italian roots. Same goes for Finnish and many others who have origins from different European countries. Although we don't have large visible minority groups I don't know of any who have cottages here which seems to be the same as down South. Some aboriginals here have cottages but most are more likely to have remote camps.

I wasn't expecting housing to be cheap in York Region but I'm surprised that it is so much. What is the travel time to downtown T.O. compared to other places in the GTA? Vaughan is also getting the TTC subway line extended into it as well right?

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Interesting how you see cottages as an "anglo" thing.

I live in Northern Ontario and cottages (also known as camps here) are popular with anglophones and francophones. Also a lot of people from Italian background have them here. And we do have quite a few people with Italian roots. Same goes for Finnish and many others who have origins from different European countries. Although we don't have large visible minority groups I don't know of any who have cottages here which seems to be the same as down South. Some aboriginals here have cottages but most are more likely to have remote camps.

I wasn't expecting housing to be cheap in York Region but I'm surprised that it is so much. What is the travel time to downtown T.O. compared to other places in the GTA? Vaughan is also getting the TTC subway line extended into it as well right?

Really I should correct it to say that it is a Caucasian thing. Italian, Jewish, whatever.

[Docere]

I recall a good number of Jewish Torontonians cottaging when I was growing up. An earlier generation went mostly to Lake Simcoe because Muskoka was "restricted."

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Docere

An earlier generation went mostly to Lake Simcoe because Muskoka was "restricted."

How long ago was that? Nowadays Jewish Canadians are disproportionately part of the uppermost classes.. funny to think that it was really not that long ago that they were one of the poorest.

[memph]

There's more of a break in development between Woodbridge/Maple and NW Toronto too. NW Toronto was mostly developed in the 60s with the last major housing developments in the early or maybe late 70s, and Woodbridge and Maple only started seeing a boom in suburban housing in the mid to late 80s. With Thornhill, Richmond Hill and Markham, it was more of a continuous wave of development spilling over from Toronto into York Region.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

How long ago was that? Nowadays Jewish Canadians are disproportionately part of the uppermost classes.. funny to think that it was really not that long ago that they were one of the poorest.

The Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s was mostly skilled working class and small proprietors (they were never a community with a lot of unskilled laborers like Italians and Ukrainians) but even then they a more affluent group was beginning to emerge (i.e. Forest Hill in Toronto and Westmount in Montreal began attracting wealthy "uptown" Jews). But the movement out of the working class and lower middle class and into the professions really took off after WWII.

I'd say the social discrimination began to break down after WWII and was mostly gone by the 1970s.

From what I know, Muskoka was restricted until the 1950s or so.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

How long ago was that? Nowadays Jewish Canadians are disproportionately part of the uppermost classes.. funny to think that it was really not that long ago that they were one of the poorest.

and how Lake Simcoe is now one of the most expensive cottaging areas since it is so close to the city.. a lot of people now commute daily into the GTA from its southern shores.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Interesting how you see cottages as an "anglo" thing.

I live in Northern Ontario and cottages (also known as camps here) are popular with anglophones and francophones. Also a lot of people from Italian background have them here. And we do have quite a few people with Italian roots. Same goes for Finnish and many others who have origins from different European countries. Although we don't have large visible minority groups I don't know of any who have cottages here which seems to be the same as down South. Some aboriginals here have cottages but most are more likely to have remote camps.

By "anglo" I think they mean "white Canadian". Going to the cottage (the Northern Ontario boy in me shudders at using the phrase) is most definitely a thing that is culturally ingrained in those who are descended from a European background.

I understand where it comes from though - in past days staying in the city was boring during the summer as there was no where near as much to do today and cities were much smoggier and polluted then. Getting away from it all to a lake was a nice change from the urban grind.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by wave46

By "anglo" I think they mean "white Canadian".

I was thinking not Italian, Jewish, Portuguese or other "white ethnics" but those of northwestern European backgrounds who aren't seen as "ethnic."

I don't know if Italian Torontonians have embraced the cottage thing that much, maybe they have. Northern Ontario may be different. Northern Ontario Italians are also more assimilated since more of them are descended from the early 20th century immigration compared to their Toronto counterparts.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by wave46

By "anglo" I think they mean "white Canadian". Going to the cottage (the Northern Ontario boy in me shudders at using the phrase) is most definitely a thing that is culturally ingrained in those who are descended from a European background.

I understand where it comes from though - in past days staying in the city was boring during the summer as there was no where near as much to do today and cities were much smoggier and polluted then. Getting away from it all to a lake was a nice change from the urban grind.

Originally Posted by Docere

I was thinking not Italian, Jewish, Portuguese or other "white ethnics" but those of northwestern European backgrounds who aren't seen as "ethnic."

I don't know if Italian Torontonians have embraced the cottage thing that much, maybe they have. Northern Ontario may be different. Northern Ontario Italians are also more assimilated since more of them are descended from the early 20th century immigration compared to their Toronto counterparts.

Is cottage culture mainly (carried over from the Old World) a British Isles and northern European thing (Swedish, Finnish and other Nordic cultures and countries have it) relative to southern Europe?

Do we expect that other groups in Toronto (including many visible minorities) aren't into that as much because they are, often demographically, more recently derived from places lacking cottage culture, but will take up cottage culture more as they assimilate?

If Jewish Torontonians are more into cottage culture than say Italian Torontonians or other southern European Torontonians, does this reflect more assimilation (or earlier assimilation)?