Understand Richmond Hill before you commit to an address
Richmond Hill is 202,000 people strung along Yonge Street north of Toronto, with the David Dunlap Observatory in the middle of it and the Oak Ridges Moraine across the top. The Yonge North subway extension is being built toward it, which is the single largest thing that will happen to this housing market in the next decade. The figures here come from two tables measured the same way in all 24 municipalities around Toronto: the board's own price index and the province's own tax return. The rent is a Toronto-wide figure rather than a local one, because nobody surveys rents municipality by municipality here.
What it actually costs to live here
Two calculators built on Ontario's own rules rather than a generic template: Canadian semi-annual compounding, the real minimum down payment tiers, and the closing costs this province charges rather than the ones it doesn't.
Rent or buy in Richmond Hill
Whether buying here beats renting, and the year it turns over. Both households start with the same cash and whichever has the cheaper month invests the difference, so the comparison is not rigged in either direction. Note that the municipal land transfer tax Toronto charges does not apply out here, which is worth real money.
Mortgage calculator
Semi-annual compounding, the payment frequencies that actually shorten the loan, the CMHC premium under twenty percent down and Ontario's 8% sales tax on it, and the provincial land transfer tax with its first-time buyer refund.
Then work out whether Richmond Hill is the right part of the region
There are no neighbourhood guides for Richmond Hill yet: the sourced, guide-by-guide treatment on this site runs to the City of Toronto's own neighbourhoods so far. What is here instead is the whole region on one comparable footing, and the city at the middle of it.
All 24 municipalities around Toronto
Every municipality in the four regions on one comparable footing: the benchmark price, the rate its council publishes, the rate a buyer actually pays once the 2016 assessment freeze is undone, and the gap between the two, which reorders the table.
Compare the region →Toronto, neighbourhood by neighbourhood
Sourced guides to the city at the middle of all this, one in each of its four community council areas, plus the two land transfer taxes a purchase inside the city limits attracts and this one does not.
Browse the city guides →What buying in Richmond Hill actually involves
The GO Richmond Hill line is the cautionary detail. It runs through the Don valley, it is single track for much of its length, it floods, and it has no all-day two-way service; the subway extension exists partly because of that. If your plan depends on rail, price the subway's actual opening rather than the announcement.
Yonge Street through Richmond Hill is where the density is going, and the streets either side of it are low-rise and staying that way. Which side of that line an address sits on decides what happens around it for the next fifteen years.
Check these before you commit
- The subway extension's alignment and station locations relative to the specific address
- Whether the property is on the Oak Ridges Moraine, which restricts what can be built and altered
- The Richmond Hill GO line's timetable, which is peak-direction only and not a commuter railway in the usual sense
- For a condominium, the building's age and its reserve fund, since much of the stock here is post-2010
The rent shown on these pages is CMHC's Toronto CMA average rather than a figure for this municipality, because the survey's zones are not municipal boundaries. It is marked as regional everywhere it appears and it is not a comparison between the places in this layer.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
The calculators open with real Richmond Hill figures: the benchmark price, market rents, the property tax rate this city actually levies: each one cited and stamped with the period it describes. Every one of them is an editable input, because a figure that describes the whole city rarely describes your purchase.
Forward-looking rates are a different kind of number. Appreciation, rent inflation and investment returns are assumptions, not facts, and they are labelled that way wherever they appear. Read the research and sourcing methodology for how the line is drawn.
- Benchmark price and market rents: published statistics, dated to the month.
- Property tax, transfer costs and insurance premiums: the municipal and provincial schedules.
- Appreciation, rent growth and investment returns: assumptions you should change.
- Nothing here is a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice.