In an exploding city like Toronto, real estate is as much about location as it is about being resourceful. Things are looking up for both owners and renters: inflation has cooled, rents are down across the board and there’s plenty of housing stock waiting to get in the game. But, until the Bank of Canada restores interest rates to pre-pandemic levels and builders get back to building, Torontonians are forced to think beyond traditional glass boxes and quaint lots. And that’s a good thing.
This past year, our readers consumed a buffet of success stories speaking to that new reality: an east-end family who built a shimmering cantilevered wonder in their backyard, retirees who traded urban living for cruising the ocean, one couple’s journey from Toronto to Grey County and back, and more.
Here, Toronto Life’s most-read real estate stories of 2024.
Tori Carter and Kirk Rickman, 50 and 54, are not your conventional retirees. In 2022, the Brighton, Ontario, couple eschewed golf courses and lazy days at home for life at sea, opting to sell their house and live full time on cruise ships. Here, the nomads tell us about why they ditched life on land, the challenges of nautical living, and how they managed to see 75 countries for roughly the cost of owning and maintaining a home. | By Tori Carter and Kirk Rickman, as told to Alex Cyr | January 12
In 2021, Elise Yu bought her 300-square-foot studio condo sight unseen. She’d been living with her parents in Vancouver and itching to move out. “I definitely saw myself living that city girl life in downtown Toronto,” she says. With help from her grandparents, Yu, a 27-year-old marketing manager at a media monitoring company, was able to afford the down payment on the small condo. | By Isabel B. Slone | April 15
Dannick Farrales and his wife, Christine, were looking to upsize to accommodate their growing family, but they quickly realized that their dream of owning a detached home in Toronto was out of reach. The solution: a four-bedroom laneway suite in Dannick’s parents’ backyard. “It feels like we found a loophole in the housing market,” he says. See how the family pulled it off. | By Dannick Farrales, as told to Alex Cyr | August 1
When husband-and-wife team Alper Ozdemir and Cynthia Liu retired, they took snowbirding to the next level. Instead of vacationing somewhere clichéd, they bought a $333,550 farmhouse in Italy—and a fixer-upper to boot. Now, with their $1.2-million renovations complete, they’ve upped the ante by renting out their Toronto home and moving to Europe full time. Here’s how they did it, in their own words. | By Alper Ozdemir and Cynthia Liu, as told to Maddy Mahoney | February 12
What house by the Humber would be complete without five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a front-yard forest, a makeup station, a pool with a waterfall and an attached three-car garage with room for 12 more cars in the driveway? | By Andrea Yu | January 2
When Covid hit, it exacerbated Kelly Barrett’s big-city frustrations: the cost of living, construction, pollution—without any of the entertainment, dining or sports. “The pandemic was Toronto without its cool,” she says. “And it was just awful. As a single middle-aged woman with no children, I wanted a new chance at life. So I left for Grand Bend. Most people thought I’d miss Toronto, that I’d soon be back with my tail between my legs. And they were right—sort of.” |By Kelly Barrett, as told to Aleah Balas | February 29
At the start of the pandemic, a wave of Torontonians traded their cubicles and cramped condos for remote work and the wide open spaces of cottage country. Now, with many companies mandating a return to the office and the allure of rural isolation having lost its lustre, some urban transplants are eager to move back to the city. The snag: they’re finding themselves priced out. Here, Laura Garetson, a GTA-based mortgage broker, explains the financial barriers city skippers are facing and when they might be able to return to Toronto. | By Ali Amad | August 22
Ryan Rohin is an only child, and he and his mom, Shoba, moved to Canada 20 years ago from southern India. With no other family in Toronto, Ryan saw it as his responsibility to make sure Shoba was taken care of. In 2019, Shoba was living in a 1,100-square-foot condo. It was about a 15-minute drive from Ryan’s residence in the east end, but after his wife, Risa, had their first son, they realized how difficult it was to shuttle him to and from Grandma’s for visits. The three of them then started talking about whether Shoba should move closer to home. | By Ryan Rohin, as told to Emma Johnston-Wheeler | March 7
It’s not easy to squeeze a family of four into a shoebox condo or a skinny semi, but devoted downtowners in this space-starved city are finding ways to make it work. Toronto started allowing laneway suites in 2018 and garden suites in 2022, and since then, the options for where—and what—families can build have improved. The imperative is to maximize every nook and cranny. Below, a series of Torontonians doing creative things with small footprints. | By Ali Amad, Alex Cyr, Emma Johnston-Wheeler, Roxy Kirshenbaum, Maddy Mahoney and Andrea Yu | October 16
Sarah Saso and her partner, Lonny Doherty, left Toronto in 2019 for Grey County, transforming a farm into what they thought would be their forever home. “Any time I’d talk about leaving the city for the country, my friends would poke fun at me, saying it would happen when pigs fly,” says Sarah. “But, in 2019, we did just that: we sold our Toronto home for $1.5 million and started on our adventure.” | By Sarah Saso, as told to Emilie Richardson-Dupuis | October 4
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