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Old 06-06-2012, 09:59 AM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,651,270 times
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One thing I never understood is, if the commute is so brutal, why not just move closer? Yea, house price. The only thing you need to sacrifice is house space, and it is totally worth it.

For a family of 4, we don't need 2200 sf of space. half of that suffices. The benefit you get from less stress and more time with family more than offset the lost space.

If one works at Bay & Queen, it is masochistic to live in Vaughan, not to mention Hamilton. Give up some space, folks. Live in smaller houses, townhouses or condos. They won't kill you and your quality of life will be dramatically improved.

I work 10 minutes walking distance from work, go home to have lunch and watch some TV everyday. I get up at 8am, and by 5:30pm, I am comfortably lying in my couch at home. Why do I need a big house with a yard to give up such high level of comfort.

Kids don't need big space. They need spending more time with parents. I have never met a kid who complain "my house is too small" only those who think "my dad is never around".

The suburban lifestyle most people choose makes Toronto so spread out and everything is so far away. It makes a city less efficient and more costly to run, yet people get nothing in return except bigger houses. What's the point? Why does our life hinge of how much space I live in?
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Old 06-06-2012, 06:36 PM
 
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@ botticelli - I live in Toronto in a 1200 sq.ft 3 bedroom house and houses in my neighbourhood go for $700,000 now. I don't live on a subway line either. Even 2 bedroom condos are getting beyond the reach of the average family.
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Old 06-07-2012, 02:16 PM
 
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Originally Posted by AlsoNotMe View Post
@ botticelli - I live in Toronto in a 1200 sq.ft 3 bedroom house and houses in my neighbourhood go for $700,000 now. I don't live on a subway line either. Even 2 bedroom condos are getting beyond the reach of the average family.
I understand the situation.

The best approach to increase Toronto's unaffordability issue is to make its inner suburbs a lot more dense. There is no other way.

Within the old city, in areas outside downtown but south of Eglinton, East of Keele/Western Road, and west of Coxwell ave/Don Mills, has very easy access to downtown, but is extremely sparsely populated. These areas should NOT be predominantly low rise houses. More mid and high rises supply is needed to both bring people to the city and make housing more affordable.

Of course you can't demolish existing single family houses, but there is still plenty of space available for multi-family residences. The area I mentioned including downtown has the same size as the city of Paris and is big enough to hold 1.5-2 Million people (currently maybe 800k?). People living in this area will hardly need a car for work and play. With the completion of the Eglinton subway, and a possible downtown-relieve-line linking the financial district with Queen East/East York/Don Mills &Eglinton, downtown will be within minutes.

Supply is always the key but a city should be cautious where the supply is. Increasing extending the YUS Subway trying to encourage people farther and farther away from the city to commute here will only evolves into a vicious unsustainable circle. The fact that there are so many people who travel from Vaughan or farther to downtown on a daily basis is ridiculous. The GTA only has 5.7 million people. If it has 12 million like LA or 19 million like NYC, do people have to travel from Barrie, Peterborough and Kitchener to work?
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Old 06-07-2012, 08:24 PM
 
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Originally Posted by AlsoNotMe View Post
What about with traffic, travis3000? My educated guess is that to get to say Bay/Bloor by 9am you'd have to leave around 7am at the latest on a Tuesday morning. Thoughts?
Yes you are correct. If your goal was to get to Bay/Bloor then it would be just under two hours with traffic, or 1 hour without traffic. Another idea is Bradford. They have a GO train that will get to downtown Toronto (Union Station) in about 1 hour. That way to get there at 9am, you could take the 7:45am train and be there in plenty of time.

Prices in Bradford are about $290,000 to $350,000 for a nice 1200-1500 sq ft newer townhome, or about $340,000 to $420,000 for a nice 1700-2200 sq ft newer detached home.
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Old 06-08-2012, 10:30 AM
 
1,863 posts, read 5,137,563 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by botticelli View Post
One thing I never understood is, if the commute is so brutal, why not just move closer? Yea, house price. The only thing you need to sacrifice is house space, and it is totally worth it.

For a family of 4, we don't need 2200 sf of space. half of that suffices. The benefit you get from less stress and more time with family more than offset the lost space.

If one works at Bay & Queen, it is masochistic to live in Vaughan, not to mention Hamilton. Give up some space, folks. Live in smaller houses, townhouses or condos. They won't kill you and your quality of life will be dramatically improved.

I work 10 minutes walking distance from work, go home to have lunch and watch some TV everyday. I get up at 8am, and by 5:30pm, I am comfortably lying in my couch at home. Why do I need a big house with a yard to give up such high level of comfort.

Kids don't need big space. They need spending more time with parents. I have never met a kid who complain "my house is too small" only those who think "my dad is never around".

The suburban lifestyle most people choose makes Toronto so spread out and everything is so far away. It makes a city less efficient and more costly to run, yet people get nothing in return except bigger houses. What's the point? Why does our life hinge of how much space I live in?
An excellent post!
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Old 06-08-2012, 08:53 PM
 
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What about the wife who stays at home with the small children? Is it okay to leave her in a little 900 sq. ft. apartment when you could commute a little farther and have her in a 2000 sq. ft. single family house?

Personally, I detest congested/long commutes and would never want to do it, but I can understand why some people do it. Kids enjoy having yards to play in, suburban communities where they can play with other kids in the streets without being worried about the city traffic and strange "characters."
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Old 06-09-2012, 05:29 AM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,651,270 times
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Originally Posted by tarp View Post
What about the wife who stays at home with the small children? Is it okay to leave her in a little 900 sq. ft. apartment when you could commute a little farther and have her in a 2000 sq. ft. single family house?

Personally, I detest congested/long commutes and would never want to do it, but I can understand why some people do it. Kids enjoy having yards to play in, suburban communities where they can play with other kids in the streets without being worried about the city traffic and strange "characters."
900sf apartments are more than enough to accommodate your wife and two kids! People around the world are doing exactly the same thing, including the richest ones such as the Swiss, the British, the Japanese.

Only North Americans (any probably Australians) have this strong entitlement of big suburban houses with yards and gardens. This is atypical rather than the normal. Children don't NEED yards to play in. Parents THINK they do.

If you think since I AM an North American, this is what people do. FINE. You have every right to, but remember you yourself out of volition choose to contribute to the long commute and disastrous commute. Traffic is inevitably bad since the majority of workers choose to work 20+ miles from office every single day. You can't only have what you want without suffering the consequences, can you? In big cities with huge suburban sprawl, none has solved this problem successfully, just become one comes with the other hand in hand.
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Old 06-09-2012, 06:00 AM
 
1,726 posts, read 5,844,630 times
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I choose not to live in a big city, or in a suburb. I am simply stating why people choose suburban living. Why pay $300k for a tiny condo in a city when you can get a detached house for the same price a little further out, pay less taxes and no condo fees, and just deal with the commute? And, no, kids do not need a yard. They also do not need fresh vegetables, they could get by just fine with canned foods and vitamin supplements. It's not a question of absolute need, but of the type of lifestyle people choose. I am glad I do not base my standard of living on the Japanese or the Brits. Luckily we do not live on an island here in North America.
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Old 06-09-2012, 06:43 AM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,651,270 times
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Originally Posted by tarp View Post
I choose not to live in a big city, or in a suburb. I am simply stating why people choose suburban living. Why pay $300k for a tiny condo in a city when you can get a detached house for the same price a little further out, pay less taxes and no condo fees, and just deal with the commute? And, no, kids do not need a yard. They also do not need fresh vegetables, they could get by just fine with canned foods and vitamin supplements. It's not a question of absolute need, but of the type of lifestyle people choose. I am glad I do not base my standard of living on the Japanese or the Brits. Luckily we do not live on an island here in North America.
I said it is fine to want to live in big suburban houses, didn't I? Nothing wrong with that. People working in Tokyo can do that too. I only emphasized in choosing to do that, you inevitably have to deal with the consequences of 2 hour commute on the highway one way each day, and your life quality will be negatively affected.

No, kids don't need yards. Most yards are nothing but a confined small land with some plants. Do you think your kids think it is sufficient for the entertainment during the 18 years of their growth every single day? What can they do with the yard any way? To run in circles? It may work for a toddler, for whom everything is interesting, but what can a 13 year old boy do with the yard?

In living in the remote suburbs where there is hardly any facilities around, life is hard and boring for a child, especially a teenager, because they don't get to see the real interesting world with PEOPLE. I am sure most 14 year old boys would choose to have a 9 sqm2 room in the city core where everything is at the doorstep over an over-sized house with a big yard 20km from everything any day. They can't go anywhere unless their car-owning parents go.
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Old 06-10-2012, 11:05 AM
 
51 posts, read 118,292 times
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Originally Posted by tarp View Post
Why pay $300k for a tiny condo in a city when you can get a detached house for the same price a little further out, pay less taxes and no condo fees, and just deal with the commute?
I'm trying to figure out a scenario where what you say is actually true. A 300K detached "a little further out" of Toronto we're talking like Oshawa which I don't consider a suburb.

A 300K property in Oshawa will be a decent sized detached, with a property tax bill of $5113.5 (according to Toronto Area Property Tax Calculator). Maintenance + insurance + utilities is extra, maybe another 3000 a year.

"Just deal with the commute"? The commute is not free, not even taking into account the time and health drain it will cost you. To live that far out, you need at least 2 cars, plan for at least $700 a month each (capital, maintenance, gas, and insurance) or pay the $300/mo GO train fee. We're talking thousands here for the commute.

The 300K condo in Toronto will be $2491.71 in taxes, about $3000 a year in maintenance and utilties, and cars will not be a requirement. I'd also suspect that in the future the Toronto property will have outpaced the Oshawa property in price appreciation.

It doesn't seem so clear cut to me that a detached is preferable given the overhead costs (they are not LESS as you say in a detached), so it really comes down to your own circumstances and lifestyle preferences.
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