Understand Markham before you commit to an address

What buying in Markham actually involves

That low rate is the layer's clearest illustration of what a rate does and does not tell you. Markham's own levy is 0.17% and York Region's is more than twice that, so the council with the low rate controls a quarter of the bill. And because Markham's prices have risen less since 2016 than most of the region's, the rate charged against a frozen assessment converts into a middling effective rate on what a house actually costs today.

Unionville and the older parts of Thornhill are a different market from the subdivisions and the towers around Highway 7. The city-wide benchmark on this page averages across all of them, which is worth remembering before you compare it against a listing.

Markham's growth has come in distinct waves and you can date an address by which one it belongs to: the 1980s and 1990s subdivisions in Milliken and Middlefield, the 2000s new-urbanist grid at Cornell in the east, Wismer and Greensborough north of that, and the towers going up at Markham Centre and along Highway 7. Each wave has its own lot size, its own construction standard and its own resale pattern.

The Highway 7 corridor is where the density is concentrated, served by the Viva rapidway in the middle of the road, and it is a genuinely different product from the rest of the city: apartments, a good deal of new supply, and buyers who are largely not competing for the same houses as families shopping catchments. Treat the apartment index and the detached index here as two separate markets that happen to share a municipality.

The job base is unusual for a suburb. The technology and corporate offices along Highway 404 and Woodbine mean a substantial share of residents work inside the municipality or one over, which is why the commute question here is often about the 404 and 407 at rush hour rather than about the train to Union.

Moving to Markham: check these before you commit

• Which school catchment the address is in, because this is one of the region's most actively shopped-for factors and the boundaries move
• Whether a townhouse is freehold or condominium, since both are common here and the monthly cost is not
• The GO Stouffville line's service level from the specific station, which varies more than the map suggests
• For older Unionville property, whether it sits inside the heritage conservation district
• Which growth wave the address belongs to, since a Cornell townhouse and a Milliken detached house are different purchases in one city
• What is approved on the Highway 7 corridor near the address, because the new supply there is concentrated rather than spread

The rent here is CMHC's Toronto CMA average rather than a municipal figure, because the survey's zones are not municipal boundaries.