Toronto real estate affordability moves farther afield
If your budget tops out near $300,000, buying a new detached home is going to mean life in the outer fringes
By Derek Raymaker - The Globe and Mail
When was the last time the price of a new detached home in the Greater Toronto Area averaged $250,000 or so? Sometimes it seems as if it was when you could still count the number of Toronto’s waterfront condo towers on one hand.
In fact, it was only 2002 when the average price of new single-detached homes ranged between $250,000 and $300,000 throughout most suburban areas of the GTA, as well as in the former Metro Toronto municipality of Scarborough.
Today, there is only one urban area in the GTA with an average single-family detached price of less than $300,000.
Clarington, the Durham Region municipality east of Oshawa, which includes the towns of Bowmanville and Courtice, registered an average price of $296,746 for detached homes in 2006, up 13.4% from $261,767 in 2005, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s year-end housing market data.
Two other markets — mostly rural — also reported average new-house prices under $300,000. New Tecumseth, in the northwestern part of greater Toronto, reported an average price of $268,793 for a detached house in 2006, and the Lake Simcoe community of Georgina, in northern York Region, reported an average price of $283,330. But both communities report very little in the way of new construction.
There are housing options in greater Toronto that meet the $250,000 threshold for affordability, but very few are detached. Stacked townhouses and condo suites are the most prevalent, but any couple with children, or planning to have children, will tell you it won’t take much to burst the seams of the limited space they include — indoor and outdoor.
For affordability and choice in the detached, new-home market, buyers generally have no choice but to venture to the outer reaches of the GTA, to places such as Clarington, or Bradford, which is a growing town with urban infrastructure just east of Highway 400 and south of Barrie.
Both of these municipalities have good access to 400-series highways and GO trains (Bradford is the northern terminus in the GO Transit network), and they also have the ability to sustain a prolonged period of low-density housing construction.
“Bradford has had an infrastructure plan in place for some time, and a ton of planning has gone into it,” said Bob Lehman, president of Meridian Consulting and the planner-in-residence at the University of Waterloo’s school of planning in the environmental studies faculty.
Bradford ended 2006 reporting an average price of $361,312 for a single-family detached house, a whopping increase of 23.6% over $292,271 in 2005.
Mr. Lehman points out that Bradford has a strong employment base, located equidistant between Barrie in the north and Newmarket in the south, and it’s also well served by highways feeding into Toronto.
“Clarington is also going to grow quite a bit, but it doesn’t have the same job base,” he said.
Housing projects such as Grand Central, built by Brookfield Homes and Fernbrook Homes, are coming on stream rapidly in Bradford. Grand Central offers a wide variety of homes, including a 1,500-square-foot detached model available for less than $300,000 — a price virtually unheard of — for that size — in nearby York Region. The models top out at 3,787 square feet for $487,000.
In Clarington, Bowmanville’s Liberty Street is one of the new detached housing projects being built.
On the low side of its price scale, you can purchase a 1,410-square-foot house for $258,000, or move up to a residence with 2,635 square feet of space on a 40-foot lot for $321,000.
Many of those who moved to low-rise, master-planned suburban communities in places such as Pickering, Brampton and Richmond Hill 10 or 15 years ago will no doubt recall that price played a big part in their decision to fling themselves into what was then the outer orbit of the GTA.
They can take some pleasure in knowing that they’re now in an enviable position compared with young families looking for affordable detached homes today.
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