If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.
Whenever I’m outside Toronto, I love to look at real estate. Partly because of professional curiosity, and partly because I’m a sadist who likes to torture myself when I see what prices are like.
This past weekend, I was out of town for a wedding, and I went and looked at a few properties.
You would be shocked at what you can pick up for the cost of HALF of a bachelor condo in downtown Toronto…
Any ideas where this is?
What a throwback to a simpler time! Although I suppose anything is, compared to Toronto…
The inside of the house wasn’t half-bad either:
It’s not Lawrence Park.
But what the hell do you want for $100K?
I also checked out a detached Victorian 5-bedroom on a 40 x 200 foot lot, for a modest $429,000.
Then again, their “rural marketing” techniques could use some work:
Any ideas where this is?
Francesca
at 7:12 am
My guess is Peterborough or somewhere around there.
David Fleming
at 9:16 am
@ Francesca
Correct!
Was that a true guess?
Francesca
at 1:28 pm
Yes it was Dave! My best friends brother lives there and he always jokes how cheap real estate is there compared to the GTA so that was my first guess when I saw this
Maggie
at 1:20 pm
Mcdonnel St. I think. My boy’s babysitter’s house is further down the road from here if I am not mistaken.
Maggie
at 1:23 pm
And I feel the need to add that I don’t live anywhere near this neighbourhood.
condodweller
at 7:43 am
I found it on MLS in 30 seconds so I’m not going to spoil it for anyone. Even searching for a fully detached house in Southern Ontario at this price yields hundreds of houses. You can find a semi in a relatively large city.
Before my search, using an educated guess, I thought it would be either in Windsor, Kingston or St. Catherines. It had to be a large enough city to have a diamond bike lane.
I actually have been looking at four-plexes in Southern Ontario, and last time I looked you could get one in London for well under $200k fully rented that looked in reasonable shape to live in. They come up for sale regularly in downtown Peterborough where I also look regularly.
Ed
at 7:58 am
I just bought in Welland . $280k for 1900 sq ft in one of the best neighbourhoods in town. beautiful tree lined street and steps to the park. The same house in my current hood would be $1.1 M.
Ed
at 8:01 am
Heck. The lot alone would be $850,000
GwenVK
at 5:01 pm
My stepson bought an investment property in Welland too – a side-by-side duplex (basically two houses stuck together) with FIVE bedrooms in each. Price? $158,000 ! He rents out each side for $1200.
Paully
at 8:05 am
Wow! Buy a whole house for less than the amount that you would have to pay over the asking price in Toronto! Impressive!
Rus
at 9:01 am
Found it – 177 Edinburgh St, Peterborough, ON K9H3H3
Joe Q.
at 9:37 am
It’s not just smaller centres in southern Ontario — the Ottawa real-estate market is moribund, prices have barely moved in several years and “days on market” is better measured in months (these days, properties sit about three months before sale). This in a city of about a million people, the fourth largest metropolitan area in Canada.
jeff316
at 10:17 am
Yup. With the exception of the Hamilton to Whitby corridor, anything on the Escarpment, downtown Kingston and the best of Ottawa’s urban Victorians, pricing in the rest of Ontario is pretty reasonable. The problem, as always, is jobs.
Joe Q.
at 1:53 pm
Jobs are an issue, for sure. In Ottawa, you have the federal government as a large and very stable employer, and household incomes are high (much higher on a median basis than those in Toronto), so it can be difficult to compare to smaller cities with based on smaller private-sector employers.
jeff316
at 4:08 pm
Yeah, the problem with Ottawa is that the feds, and their spinoffs, are the only game in town and hiring has been pretty tight. Great place to own a house if you have a unionized desk job, though.
reluctant
at 6:50 am
There are two universities, colleges, and a surprisingly large private sector (consultancies of various types for example) so it’s far from just the feds. Having lived in Ottawa, it’s surprisingly cosmopolitan with a large population of well educated and traveled residents. It’s not a bad place to live at all.
Kyle
at 10:26 am
I agree with Jeff. The difference between the Toronto and Ottawa is the local job market and rate of household formation. Those who claim it is only “artificially” low interest rates driving Toronto’s real estate market are willfully blind to the fact that places like Ottawa, Peterborough, and any other Ontario city/town that doesn’t have a direct commuter line into Toronto, have the exact same interest rates that Toronto has, but their real estate prices are not rising.
jeff316
at 11:07 am
You got it. It’s really cyclical. Back about seven years, one of the hotter markets in Ontario was Timmins. Today, one of the metal plants has closed and the market is dead.
It was a long time ago, but I was once seriously considering taking a job up in a very rural area.
I was quite young, and my boss at the time (from that area) caught me looking on MLS at some of the more “expensive” housing in that area. (200$k). Not expensive by GTA standards (even back then!), and well within my salary’s price range.
She was livid. “If you’re going to buy one of those I’m not sending you up there,” she told me. “Because you’ll have no one to sell that to when you quit, or when you lose your job or when the economy tanks.” She was honestly mad. “At least if you buy one of the 40$k houses, you’ll have it paid off in five years and when you leave it really won’t matter how much you dump it for. The nice places are the houses for doctors – or stupid people that move in from away.”
And boy was she was right.
Cool Koshur
at 12:45 pm
You can find decent homes at affordable price in Hamilton. You are about 1 hour by GO to Union station which is not bad. Prices have been rising steadily in last couple of years. In next few years, it will be out of reach.
JG
at 4:21 pm
Just want to clarify here, I am not doing this as a plug.
However, speaking of Throwbacks, watch a few episodes of “Big City Broker” on HGTV. (I’m sure you can find them on YouTube). It always amazes me how much Condo’s were back in ’07, ’08, etc. And back then, people were saying they were too expensive.
Duncan Bray
at 5:02 pm
Rumour has it that lots of potential development land has been conditionally purchased by builder/investors around Peterborough anticipating the extension of the 407 and possible Go Train service extension which would turn it in to another bedroom community like Barrie or Hamilton.