OTTAWA’S AFFORDABILITY FACTOR
It’s no secret that Toronto’s housing market is volatile at best, with the high cost of homes in the Greater Toronto Area pricing many out of their preferred neighbourhoods or the prospect of purchasing a home or condo at all.
Just last month, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released its quarterly Housing Market Assessment, which concludes the GTA continues to be one of the most vulnerable real estate markets in the country.
With the release of that report, the CMHC said, “Despite the recent easing in Toronto’s resale market, we continued to detect moderate evidence of price acceleration, with strong growth in home prices among all housing types.”
When you compare the Toronto housing market to Ottawa’s, for example, the difference in price is hard to ignore. According to Rick Eisert, President of the Ottawa Real Estate Board, housing prices in Toronto and the surrounding area are almost double what you would find in the Nation’s Capital.
“The affordability factor in Ottawa is much greater than it is in Toronto,” Eisert explains.
“The Toronto market has always been totally different than Ottawa’s. We have always had a very conservative market and Toronto’s has always been more active — they have had more speculation than we’ve ever had. Ottawa isn’t subject to the big swings we see in the Toronto marketplace. Ours is kind of boring, in comparison, but that’s a good thing in a lot of respects.”
Of course, price isn’t the only major difference when it comes to living in Toronto or Ottawa — lifestyle is a big factor as well. On top of boasting unemployment rates lower than the national average, Ottawa also has one of the shortest commute times of the major Canadian cities.
“The good thing about Ottawa is that getting from one end of the city to the other is 45 minutes at the most,” Eisert says, adding that’s even before the completion of the city’s new Light Rail Transit system, which will result in even shorter commute times.
That means, whether you buy in the popular western suburb of Kanata, one of the hottest real estate markets in Ottawa right now, or trendy areas closer to the city’s core — like Hintonburg, Westboro, Centretown and The Glebe — you are never too far from your next destination.
Eisert says, when you add it all up, it just makes sense for Toronto residents who have grown tired of the high cost of living in the GTA to consider making a move to Canada’s Capital.
“If you have the ability — you have a job here of you have a job that allows you to work from home — then it would make sense to sell your house in The Beaches, for example, and buy an equivalent home in a sought-after neighbourhood here in Ottawa,” he explains.
“With the price differential, you wouldn’t have a mortgage, you wouldn’t have a long commute — it would just be a completely different lifestyle.”