Understand Aurora before you commit to an address
Aurora is 62,000 people between Richmond Hill and Newmarket, with a nineteenth-century core, a great deal of mature low-rise around it, and a heritage character it has defended more successfully than most of York Region. Figures come from the board's price index and the province's tax return, measured the same way in all 24 municipalities here. The rent is Toronto-wide, because nobody surveys rents municipality by municipality.
The cost of living in Aurora, and what a home costs
Two calculators on Ontario's own rules: semi-annual compounding and the real minimum down payment tiers, and the closing costs this province actually charges.
Rent or buy in Aurora
Whether buying here beats renting, and the year it turns over. Toronto's municipal land transfer tax does not apply out here, which is worth real money.
Mortgage calculator
Semi-annual compounding, the CMHC premium under twenty percent down with Ontario's 8% tax on it, and the provincial land transfer tax.
Then work out whether Aurora is the right part of the region
No neighbourhood guides for Aurora yet. What is here instead is the whole region on one comparable footing.
All 24 municipalities around Toronto
Every municipality in the four regions on one footing: the published rate, the rate a buyer actually pays once the 2016 assessment freeze is undone, and the gap between them.
Compare the regionToronto, neighbourhood by neighbourhood
Sourced guides to the city at the middle of all this, one in each of its four community council areas.
Browse the city guidesWhat buying in Aurora actually involves
Aurora's apartment index fell 12.3% over the year to July 2026 while its detached index fell 3.7%, which is one of the widest gaps between the two in this layer. The reason is straightforward: there is not much apartment stock here and what there is turns over thinly, so a small number of trades move the index a long way. Treat the apartment figure as directional rather than precise.
What is scarce here is land inside the settlement boundary. Aurora is largely built out, the Oak Ridges Moraine is immediately north and east of it, and that combination is most of why prices sit above the York Region median.
The town divides at Yonge and again at Wellington. The old core near Yonge and Wellington is nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century housing with the maintenance profile that implies; the 1980s and 1990s subdivisions sit east and west of it; and the newest stock is in the northeast toward Bayview and St John's Sideroad. Aurora's reputation for being expensive comes mostly from the first and third of those, not the middle.
Aurora has a real employment base for a town this size, in the offices and light industry along the 404 and Wellington. That matters to a buyer in a specific way: a meaningful share of local trips are within the town or one municipality over, so the daily drive here is often nothing like the hour-plus GO commute the distance from Toronto suggests.
Moving to Aurora: check these before you commit
- Whether the property is in a heritage conservation district, because Aurora has several and they govern exterior work
- The specific GO train timetable, since Barrie line service is not uniform through the day
- For older stock, the state of the electrical service and the plumbing, which is the usual question in a pre-1960 house
- Whether the lot is on the Oak Ridges Moraine, which limits what can be added to it
- Which of the three Auroras the address is in, because the core, the 1990s subdivisions and the northeast price differently
- Access to the 404 at the hour you would use it, which is the real commute for a good share of households here
The rent here is CMHC's Toronto CMA average rather than a municipal figure, because the survey's zones are not municipal boundaries.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Aurora figure below is cited, stamped with the period it describes, and editable, because a number for the whole city rarely describes your purchase. Appreciation and investment returns are assumptions rather than facts, and they are labelled that way. Read the methodology for how the line is drawn.
- Prices, rents and tax rates: published statistics and the official schedules.
- Nothing here is a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice.
Where the Aurora figures come from
- Market Watch, July 2026: MLS® Home Price Index by municipality · Toronto Regional Real Estate Board · retrieved Supports: Composite, single-family detached and apartment benchmark prices for every municipality in this layer, July 2026, Year-over-year changes on each of those benchmarks, An All TRREB Areas composite benchmark of $934,600, down 4.63% year over year, A City of Toronto composite benchmark of $928,200, down 3.83%
- Market Watch, January 2016: MLS® Home Price Index by municipality · Toronto Regional Real Estate Board · retrieved Supports: Composite benchmark prices for every municipality in this layer at January 2016, the valuation date Ontario assessments are frozen to, A City of Toronto composite benchmark of $612,200 at that date, A Milton composite benchmark of $694,400, up 43.66% over the previous twelve months
- Financial Information Return 2024, Schedule 22: Municipal and School Board Taxation · Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing · retrieved Supports: Lower-tier, upper-tier, education and total residential tax rates for every municipality in Ontario, 2024, The residential assessment each rate is charged against and the taxes it raises, A uniform education rate of 0.153% across the province, The 2025 returns being incomplete at the time of retrieval, with seven of the twenty-four municipalities in this layer not yet filed
- Rental Market Survey: Toronto, average rent by bedroom type, October 2025 · Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation · retrieved Supports: Toronto CMA average purpose-built rents of $1,761 one-bedroom, $2,045 two-bedroom and $2,294 three-bedroom-plus, A Toronto CMA purpose-built vacancy rate of 3.0%
- Assessment Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. A.31 · Government of Ontario · retrieved Supports: Property is assessed at current value, being the amount the land would realise on a sale, The valuation date is fixed by regulation, and the province has kept it at 1 January 2016 for every year since 2017
- Calculating Land Transfer Tax · Ontario Ministry of Finance · retrieved Supports: Provincial transfer tax brackets, The conditional 2.5% band