FML Listings

Toronto Real Estate at its finest

500k Houses in Toronto

Well that photo up there is pretty depressing…

What’s your house budget? Is $500,000.00 reasonable for a small first time buyer’s house?  No it’s not lol, do you not read this blog??  I did some quick searching and saw that on MLS right now in Toronto there are about 700 houses for sale at or under 500k, but keep in mind a good chunk are priced at 475k or 495k so they’ll get into bidding wars and most of them will go over 500k so they aren’t really in your budget, and about 75% of them were either at Jane and Finch, super east Scarborough, Mimico, or Oakwood.  I guess it sounds picky to say you don’t want to live in those areas even though you’re spending 500k, so I guess there are houses you *can* afford to buy in this city if you suck it up and move to those areas. 

Conversely, there are 2,434 houses over 500k… and I’m not just talking Forest Hill. I’m talking everywhere, including the Junction, Leslieville, “Upper Beaches” (it’s so hard for my fingers to type Upper Beaches when my brain is telling them to type East Danforth Scarborough).

Lesson learned?  If you want to be a cheap-o and only spend half a million dollars on a super tiny house, you’ll need to move to a kind of ghetto area, that your Lying-So-He-Can-Make-20Grand-Doing-Nothing-Realtor will tell you is gentrifying so it’s gonna be great, just give it two weeks, he promises. 

FYI, for a 500k house you need $100,000.00 down.  It’s interesting since the stats say that most people have closer to 30k down.  I personally thought I had a pretty hefty down payment, but assuming I buy a 650k house (lol as if), the Land Transfer Tax and Closing Costs on that house take my down payment down by 30k, so if you think you’ve saved enough, I’d suggest saving at least another 30k, or use CMHC and pay interest for 30 years on the 30k you didn’t save, making that 30k eventually cost you closer to 100k. See?? Math can be fun!!

  1. fmlistings posted this