Where to live in Toronto
Toronto is six municipalities that were merged in 1998 and 158 neighbourhoods the City draws boundaries around, and the single most useful thing to know before you start is that the market has become two markets. Over the year to July 2026 the City's detached benchmark was down 4.40% and its apartment benchmark down 7.09%, and the gap is wider in some districts than the fall itself. These are 24 neighbourhood guides, six in each of the City's four community council areas, filterable below.
Where to start looking in Toronto
Most people arrive with one constraint rather than a map. Each line below names one, one place to begin, and the figure behind it, which comes from the guide the line points at.
- The lowest price of entry. West Hill sits in TRREB district E10, whose apartment benchmark of $383,600 in July 2026 was the lowest of any Toronto district.
- A detached house, and bedrooms. West Humber-Clairville sits in W10, whose $879,000 detached benchmark was the lowest in the City of Toronto, and 33% of its dwellings have four or more bedrooms against 17% city-wide.
- To commute without a car. The Annex has two subway lines within walking distance. Scarborough has been entirely on buses since Line 3 closed in 2023.
- To be near the water. Mimico, where the waterfront park opened in 2013 on what had been private back yards, and where the composite benchmark was $814,300. The Beaches is the same lake at $1.63M detached.
- The oldest streets. The Annex: bay-and-gable houses on 1880s lots, annexed with Yorkville in 1887.
Browse dedicated guides for The old city and East York, North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke and York.
24 communities across the city
24 guides, six in each of the City's four community council areas, chosen so the set spans the city rather than clustering downtown. Filter by area, or read them against each other: their districts moved by very different amounts over the same twelve months.
Agincourt
A detached house at $1.05M and a composite down 8.66% over the year, in a neighbourhood whose subway is still being built.
Bayview Village
A 1950s garden suburb of ravine lots that gained a subway station, a shopping centre and a wall of towers along Sheppard without losing the lots.
Birchcliffe-Cliffside
The top of the Scarborough Bluffs, where a cottage strip became a bungalow strip and is now being replaced one lot at a time, with the lake ninety metres straight down.
Cedarbrae
A 1960s subdivision named after a golf course, with a library that has been the neighbourhood's front door since 1963 and a hospital campus at its edge.
Don Mills
Canada's first planned suburb, laid out in 1952 around a shopping centre that has since been demolished and rebuilt as a street grid.
Don Valley Village
Twenty-six thousand people between Finch and Sheppard with a subway line under one edge and the Don's east branch down the other.
Glenfield-Jane Heights
Thirty thousand people in five square kilometres at Jane and Finch, a Neighbourhood Improvement Area with a subway station at one corner and a light rail line being built along the other.
Islington
The village Etobicoke grew out of, now a subway station, a strip of murals and the quiet half of the borough's centre.
Leaside
A railway town incorporated in 1913 and swallowed in 1967, now the piece of North York that prices like midtown and is about to get two Crosstown stops.
Liberty Village
A prison farm turned factory district turned condominium district, hemmed in by a rail corridor with three ways out and a 1793 garrison on its western edge.
Malvern East
A 1970s Ontario Housing Corporation new town in north-east Scarborough, designated an Emerging Neighbourhood in the City's own index, with some of the cheapest freehold townhouses in the city.
Mimico
A lakeshore village behind a rail corridor, with twenty condominium towers on its old motel strip and a composite down 3.62% over the year.
Photographs: Agincourt GO station, April 2026 by Dillan Payne, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Newtonbrook Creek Pathway by Sikander Iqbal, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Birchmount Stadium by FaysaLBinDaruL, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Cedarbrae Collegiate Institute by SimonP, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Shops at Don Mills by Jeff Hitchcock from Seattle, WA, USA, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Godstone Park, Toronto - 2026 by Amakuha, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · West Park Healthcare Centre by WayneBu, CC0, Wikimedia Commons · Islington Avenue - Etobicoke, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Ca. February 1988 by Giorgio Galeotti, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Toronto Leaside Library by GelvinM, CC0, Wikimedia Commons · Princes' Boulevard (between Nunavut & Newfoundland) by Jeff Hitchcock from Seattle, WA, USA, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Scarborough City Centre from Highway 401 by EelamStyleZ, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Odeon Lakeshore Theatre by Peter Broster, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
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Showing 1–12 of 24 communities
The four areas at a glance
One city, one tax rate, four housing markets that behaved differently over the same twelve months. The City of Toronto composite was down 3.83% over the year to July 2026, but the MLS® Home Price Index composite for district E09 in Scarborough fell 8.82% while C11 in Leaside rose 1.30%, and the detached benchmark runs from $879,000 in Etobicoke's W10 to $2.61 million in the Annex's C02.
| Community council area | Neighbourhoods | Character |
|---|---|---|
| The old city and East York | Liberty Village, South Riverdale, St. Lawrence, The Annex, The Beaches, The Junction | The pre-amalgamation city and the borough beside it. Victorian and Edwardian stock, two subway lines, the most expensive low-rise in the country, and the only wards where six units are permitted on a lot. |
| North York | Bayview Village, Don Mills, Don Valley Village, Leaside, Willowdale, York University Heights | A postwar suburb that built itself a downtown on the subway. A detached benchmark of $1.9 million and an apartment benchmark of $559,000 within a few hundred metres of each other. |
| Scarborough | Agincourt, Birchcliffe-Cliffside, Cedarbrae, Malvern East, West Hill, Wexford-Maryvale | Among the cheapest detached houses in the city and the steepest falls of the last year, on a transit network that is still a promise rather than a line. |
| Etobicoke and York | Glenfield-Jane Heights, Islington, Mimico, Stonegate-Queensway, The Kingsway, West Humber-Clairville | The lakeshore villages and the old City of York, where the rail corridor decides more about an address than the postcode does. |
Both tiers here are the City's, which is unusual on this site. Every other city covered here gets a grouping we had to invent and then apologise for. Toronto's four community council areas are statutory: the City of Toronto Act provides for community councils, council has established four of them, and they decide local planning and traffic matters that never reach the full council. Below them the City publishes 158 social planning neighbourhoods, raised from 140 in 2022 when sixteen high-growth ones were split. So the only editorial act left is which 24 of the 158 got a guide, and that choice is six per area rather than a survey. Real places are missing: the Danforth, Parkdale, Rexdale, Regent Park, Weston and most of the other 134.