Thinking about buying some of that property for sale in Toronto that you saw while visiting the city? No doubt if you live outside of Ontario, or even in a few cities in it, you have heard stories about how high the cost of living can be here. On the west coast, for instance, people have the impression that the average family could not afford a nice home in the biggest metropolis in the nation. However, as we shall see in our article, the definition of high cost of living is extremely relative.

First let's think about things on the national scale. It is true that real estate costs in Toronto are higher than the Canadian average, but keep in mind that that average takes all of the country's cities into consideration. A house in Toronto will be listed at a lot higher price than Ajax homes for sale or those in other towns in Ontario. However, when one takes a look at Canada's major cities, Toronto is in fact only the second highest. Vancouver's housing prices are much higher, double the average price of a Toronto home. And this despite being only half of the size of Toronto.

Real estate prices are just a part of what makes up cost of living, although they are a huge part of it. Other considerations include the cost of food, transportation, taxes, utilities, even recreation. The weird thing about these indicators is that as far as food and recreation go, smaller towns tend to be more expensive than larger ones. You might get a Markham house for sale at half the price of equivalent property in Toronto, but going out for sushi is a lot harder and a lot more expensive. So there is a little bit of balance to the real estate costs.

Of course, you could just look at the big world picture if you needed to feel better about the cost of living in Toronto. If you think it's expensive here, it might really blow you away to find out that the city sits at number 54 on the list of the most expensive cities in the world. That's right, compared to places like Moscow, Tokyo, and London, Toronto is a great deal. People who sold Toronto cpndos and moved to Tokyo probably could not make their down payment on the purchase of a new home, that is how high real estate is going for in the rest of the world!

And it's not just housing prices that are worse in international cities either. Believe it or not, gas, energy, and food are all much cheaper here than they are in other major world cities. So the next time you feel like complaining about the price of office space for lease in Toronto, think about your counterparts in Copenhagen or Seoul!