A cursory look at condo prices on any website* shows that most condos are well below $1M CAD. A 1 bedroom can be had in the downtown core for 600-700k, and significantly lower if you don’t mind commuting from Scarborough or Etobicoke.

Also, interest rates are 1% lower in Canada (albeit on shorter terms), and property taxes are roughly half.

This isn’t to say that homes are “cheap”, but there’s more to the story.

(Aside, I have lived in both cities for a considerable number of years.)

https://www.zolo.ca/toronto-real-estate/sold

Which city did you enjoy more and why? As someone who has entertained moving to either one day from Vancouver/Bc, am very curious!

Toronto is a failed city. Stay west.

Would be good to elaborate.

My understanding is that there's a lot of foreign capital getting parked in real estate in Toronto. I believe they were going to implement a vacancy tax similar to Vancouver next year to try to curb that

There’s not a lot of evidence that it’s not the locals creating a bubble because of speculation and lax lending. If you don’t believe me look up how nicely private mortgage debt in Canada correlates with the growth in housing prices in Canadian cities. Canadians hold one of the highest rates of personal debt in the OECD.

That's actually a really good point to ponder about. I've seen a number of news articles about predatory practices among real estate agents (I believe many hog anywhere from 3 properties or more to ride the bubble, there's unethical abuse of dual representation, there's bid secrecy, etc)

No doubt, there's also a great deal of greed and wealth signaling from the general population (especially among upper middle class) as well. Competition around high ranking school areas comes to mind. Not to mention rental properties are pretty much the go-to choice of passive income building that most people go for.

I would bet that if multiple property ownership was penalized by high taxes, real estate prices would come down real fast.

> SF a condo might be 1M, but getting paid 250k+ for a job is fairly common.

If you're in tech of course. SF and Toronto have many other professionals living in. How's the median salaries comparing?

Our of curiosity, is $250+k genuinely a fairly common salary in SF, or are you exaggerating to make a point? Surely that must only account for a very small number of the total residents who work in particular industries.