Where to live in the Greater Toronto Area
Ten neighbourhoods, written rather than generated: what each place is actually like, how you get out of it in the morning, what there is to do at the weekend — and underneath all of that, what homes there have really sold for.
The Beaches
A lakefront village inside the city, where the boardwalk is the back garden and the commute is a streetcar ride along Queen.
Leslieville
Victorian workers’ cottages, film studios and a stretch of Queen East that changed faster than almost anywhere in the city.
The Annex
Grand Victorian houses, a university on the doorstep and two subway lines meeting underneath it.
Liberty Village and King West
Victorian factories turned into offices and lofts, then surrounded by towers — the densest new housing in the city.
Willowdale East
A downtown of its own on the Yonge subway, with quiet detached streets a block behind the towers.
Mimico and Humber Bay Shores
A century-old lakeside village with a wall of new towers on the water beside it.
Islington–City Centre West
Etobicoke’s centre: subway at both ends, towers along Bloor and large quiet lots behind them.
Unionville
A preserved nineteenth-century main street, a pond, and some of the most sought-after schools in York Region.
Port Credit
A working harbour at the mouth of the Credit River, a GO train to Union, and an LRT arriving.
Kleinburg
A village on the Humber with a major art gallery, large lots and no train — the trade every buyer here makes knowingly.
How these are put together
The descriptions are ours, and deliberately name no shops or restaurants — a guide that recommends a café is wrong the first time one closes, and we would have no way to stand behind a list of “best” anything. Commercial character is described by street instead, which stays true.
Sale and listing figures are aggregates from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board’s MLS® System. School information comes from the Ontario Ministry of Education and EQAO; population and income from the Statistics Canada 2021 Census.