From the National Post:
It took Russell Phipps just one day to sell his three-bedroom, 1,800-sq.-ft. house in Ajax, Ont., after a fierce bidding war. With an early closing and no place yet to live, the Toronto native moved into a friend’s 550-sq.-ft. Corktown condo in the city to give downtown living a try. It didn’t take long before he realized he wanted out ? far out…
Phipps can’t gush enough about all the pluses of leaving Toronto. He didn’t have to deal with intense condo bidding wars. He only had to pay a $20,000 deposit instead of about $80,000 in the big city. He avoided what he calls Toronto’s “double land transfer tax.” Parking, storage and finish upgrades were all included in the $389,000 price tag. He can walk to work, the mall and the gym but is still within an hour’s drive of Toronto if he wants to pop in to see friends. And he’s just 10 minutes from the beach. “I get all the bonuses of condo living but I get it in a suburban atmosphere.”…
In Niagara Falls, Mayor Jim Diodati uses words like “explosive” and “feverish” to describe the unprecedented growth in his city’s south and southwest ends. More than half of the new home and condo purchases are from GTA buyers, he says, with “entire subdivisions selling out before we can get services in the ground.” Some 761 building permits worth $238.5 million were issued last year, up 27.3 per cent from 2015. Those numbers “are from outer space,” Diodati says.
The Niagara region’s population is expected to grow from 447,888 now to 610,000 by 2041, according to the municipality’s forecasts.