Condo buyers can get twice the space if they buy in Waterloo instead of Toronto

It’s a common notion: exit the GTA and a world of affordable housing opportunity awaits you. But now, there’s some hard data to back that notion up.

New condo buyers, perhaps disgusted by the soaring condo prices in the GTA, are travelling west into neighbouring cities like Hamilton, Kitchener, and Waterloo to buy property, according to Financial Post. These locales are offering homebuyers more “bang for their buck” with increasingly integrated transit links.

Condo sales in Hamilton, Kitchener, and Waterloo saw “notable traction” since January, thanks in part to Metrolinx’s continued regional expansion, tagged at $43-billion.

In Kitchener this year alone, sales rose 93% between January and June compared to the same time period in 2017. Waterloo saw a 51% increase while Hamilton maintains a hot condo market for people looking at spaces outside Toronto.

“The amount of demand in downtown Toronto, especially in the office market, has been well known for the last number of years and with that, demand for housing has steadily ratcheted up … As these outlying areas are developed with more infrastructure in terms of restaurants and retail, it’s made them a lot more attractive,” says Ray Wong from Altus Group, a market intelligence firm.

More space, less money

Obviously, a clear draw to milder markets is the price-per-square-foot. Larger spaces can be secured for comparatively smaller sums which in turn may help homebuyers with debt and savings goals.

“A buyer in Toronto with $500,000 to spend would likely have to settle for a one-bedroom unit of about 521 square feet,” said a research manager from Altus. “But the same budget in Waterloo would secure a two-bedroom unit of 967 square feet.”

Kitchener-Waterloo is also becoming an employment hub where a growing number of “startup and technology companies [are] operating in former BlackBerry Ltd. buildings.”

Places like Waterloo’s Idea Quarter are attracting skilled workers to the region while effectively competing within the GTA’s talent pool.