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Wow, I would not have guessed that Toronto is even cheaper for housing than Chicago. The Windy City and Philadelphia are by far the cheapest walkable "true cities" (this excludes commuter hells like the three Texas cities) in the USA, and as that shows they are just a small fraction of the price of New York or San Francisco.
Since Canada has yet to have its housing bubble burst, the one that exploded down here in 2009, I think that this has more to do with the current exchange rate (C$1.00 = US$0.75) than anything else. Toronto and the rest of Canada may seem cheap today to Americans, with the low loony, but they will get a lot cheaper when and if higher interest rates finally arrive.
Wow, I would not have guessed that Toronto is even cheaper for housing than Chicago. The Windy City and Philadelphia are by far the cheapest walkable "true cities" (this excludes commuter hells like the three Texas cities) in the USA, and as that shows they are just a small fraction of the price of New York or San Francisco.
Since Canada has yet to have its housing bubble burst, the one that exploded down here in 2009, I think that this has more to do with the current exchange rate (C$1.00 = US$0.75) than anything else. Toronto and the rest of Canada may seem cheap today to Americans, with the low loony, but they will get a lot cheaper when and if higher interest rates finally arrive.
Very little to do with exchange rate. I used to live in Cambridge MA sharing a 2-bed apartment, paying $1500 USD per person with my roommate. Now I share a brand new 2-bed condo with another roommie in Toronto, for $850 CAD each. Toronto is not just cheap from a U.S. perspective: the rent is just very very affordable compared with many global cities. Simplest reason: more supply than demand. In Boston, there were maybe a total of 4 new high rise condo constructions when I was there last year, in the entire city, and they were all high-end luxury developments. In Toronto, I believe the number right now is close to 150+ high rise construction, and this is not even counting those in the suburbs like Mississauga.
I don't think it was ever that expensive to begin with. Only to people who have never been anywhere else. And there's quite a lot of them. Same applies with Seattle.
Toronto is certainly more expensive than some of those cities for those who wish to purchase a single family detached home in the city.
Those people shouldn't expect to purchase single family homes. You take so much land for the sole use of a few people in a large city, of course it SHOULD be very expensive. I'd hate it if they were cheap.
I suspect the Toronto numbers are for the GTA. Could be wrong, but $(CAD)278/sf seems on the low side for just Toronto, SFHs in Toronto are more expensive, even in Scarborough, Jane-Finch and Rexdale though barely. New condos are usually $500/sf+ and of course SFHs in Old Toronto, central and south Etobicoke and central North York are well above $300/sf. That leaves only older apartment buildings that are <$278/sf and I'm not convinced they're enough to bring down the average. Not all the suburbs are that cheap either, but some are around that, others a bit less, and the very far flung ones might be about $200/sf.
Anyways, if we're talking metro areas, there's no way Chicago is similar to Toronto (at least for buyers as opposed to renters). Chicago is easily half as expensive. LA might be a bit more expensive now with the strong US dollar, but not by much, unless you include basements which are common in Canada but rare in LA. Actually most of these other cities don't have much basement space, but Toronto does, depending on whether you include it, it could make about a 20-30% difference in prices.
Regarding Tokyo, I've heard there's little resale market for SFH there, people just tear down and rebuild, resale is limited to apartments which are more likely to be more expensive.
I suspect the Toronto numbers are for the GTA. Could be wrong, but $(CAD)278/sf seems on the low side for just Toronto, SFHs in Toronto are more expensive, even in Scarborough, Jane-Finch and Rexdale though barely. New condos are usually $500/sf+ and of course SFHs in Old Toronto, central and south Etobicoke and central North York are well above $300/sf. That leaves only older apartment buildings that are <$278/sf and I'm not convinced they're enough to bring down the average. Not all the suburbs are that cheap either, but some are around that, others a bit less, and the very far flung ones might be about $200/sf.
Anyways, if we're talking metro areas, there's no way Chicago is similar to Toronto (at least for buyers as opposed to renters). Chicago is easily half as expensive. LA might be a bit more expensive now with the strong US dollar, but not by much, unless you include basements which are common in Canada but rare in LA. Actually most of these other cities don't have much basement space, but Toronto does, depending on whether you include it, it could make about a 20-30% difference in prices.
Regarding Tokyo, I've heard there's little resale market for SFH there, people just tear down and rebuild, resale is limited to apartments which are more likely to be more expensive.
Chicago's metro sprawls out quite a bit more than the GTA. To get something comparable to Chicago's metro you'd have to go to Golden Horseshoe proportions and make your comparisons there. No sense comparing the Toronto CMA or even GTA to a U.S metro.
Chicago's metro sprawls out quite a bit more than the GTA. To get something comparable to Chicago's metro you'd have to go to Golden Horseshoe proportions and make your comparisons there. No sense comparing the Toronto CMA or even GTA to a U.S metro.
True that Chicago does sprawl way out but it might still be fair to count this sprawl (or a lot of it) as part of the metro area IF they are integrated to the city. That would be the true definition of a metro - how connected it is to the given city in that people live there and travel to the city daily, not necessarily by geographical land as all cities have different levels of densities and sprawl designs. It seems like the furthest points outside of the Chicago core like Naperville, Joilet and places past north Chicago seem to be connected by trains to the city so it could be fair to count these as part of the metro if people do take express trains from these places and work in Chicago, similar to people in far north places like Aurora in Toronto. As a Torontonian, I don't think it's fair to count places like Hamilton and Niagara Falls as part of the GTA metro, they are clearly not integrated but I'm no Chicago suburbs expert so I don't what to pick and exclude there. But Chicago does sprawls out more in a consistent fashion and seems to have more trains connected these far flung places so I would suspect it's metro is bigger than Toronto's, but I'm sure it's metro does not encompass all of Chicagoland just as Toronto does not encompass all of the GHS. Hard to find data on this though.
Last edited by johnathanc; 09-28-2015 at 10:50 AM..
I would think one would also need to compare real incomes to housing prices to make a more meaningful comparison as to affordability.
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