Fifty-five per cent of GTA-based poll respondents say they’d move to a more affordable city
We’ve heard Lethbridge is beautiful this time of year
More than half of GTA-based respondents to a new poll said they would think about moving to a more affordable city.
The survey, conducted on behalf of real estate company Royal LePage, asked people in the Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver areas if they would purchase a home in one of the country’s more affordable cities if they were able to find a job there. Fifty-five per cent in the GTA said they would. Topping the list of potential new surroundings: Edmonton, Thunder Bay, Charlottetown and Windsor-Essex.
Related: Edmonton leapfrogs Toronto as Canada’s hottest luxury real estate market
“Home prices in Canada’s largest cities have moderated over the past couple of years, but for many buyers, the math still doesn’t work,” Phil Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage, said in a statement accompanying the poll results. “As barriers to entry remain high in the country’s most expensive urban centres, relocating to a more affordable city is becoming less of a last resort and more of a deliberate strategy.”
The published data also revealed a list of Canada’s most affordable cities. On the National Affordability Ranking, Lethbridge, Alberta ranked first.
Related: Ontario’s mortgage delinquency rate has spiked by 52 per cent
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
