Understand Toronto before you commit to an address
Toronto is six municipalities that were merged in 1998 and still argue about it, 2.8 million people over 630 km², and one market that has quietly become two. In July 2026 the City's detached benchmark was $1,455,200 and its apartment benchmark $551,900, and over the previous year the first fell 4.4% while the second fell 7.1%. In the district around the Annex that gap runs from 2.2% to 14.7%. These are 4 neighbourhood guides, one in each of the City's four community council areas, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside, including the land transfer tax this city charges twice.
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 Toronto
Whether buying beats renting in a market where the composite benchmark has fallen for a year, apartments have fallen twice as fast as houses, and getting in costs two land transfer taxes. Both households start with the same cash and whichever of them has the cheaper month invests the difference, so the comparison is not rigged in either direction.
Mortgage calculator
Semi-annual compounding, every payment frequency including the accelerated ones, the CMHC premium your down payment triggers, Ontario's 8% sales tax on that premium, and the municipal land transfer tax that doubles the cost of closing in this city and nowhere else in the province.
Then find the part of the city you want to be in
The neighbourhood index groups Toronto by community council area: the one grouping on this site that is statutory rather than editorial, since the City of Toronto Act provides for community councils and council has established four of them. Every guide keeps sourced facts apart from editorial observation, credits its photographs, and dates what it claims.
4 neighbourhood guides
One in each community council area, each with sourced facts, schools, parks, amenities, drive times, its own TRREB district benchmark, and an honest account of the trade-offs.
Browse every neighbourhood →
The four community council areas
Toronto and East York, North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke York. Unlike every other grouping on this site, these are not ours: they are statutory, they have councils that decide local planning, and since 2025 they no longer all have the same zoning permissions.
Compare the four areas →The 24 municipalities around Toronto
Mississauga to Brock, Oakville to Oshawa: every municipality in Durham, Halton, Peel and York on one comparable footing. What each publishes as its tax rate, what that really works out to once Ontario's frozen 2016 assessment is undone, and the fact that none of them charges the second land transfer tax this city does.
Compare the region →Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
The calculators open with real Toronto 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.