West

Downtown Toronto is one of the hottest areas for real estate in all of the Greater Toronto Area. More people want to buy a condo there than in any other area, including the inner and outer ring suburbs like York and Etobicoke where the prices are much cheaper. This is because the downtown area is hip, happening, and just happens to be the location of a large number of headquarters offices for major companies. When you combine the business connections, entertainment option, and the accessibility offered by the many transit stops, it's no wonder the area is in such high demand.

To deal with the enormity of Toronto, Canada has to offer, it is necessary to subdivide even within neighborhoods. Downtown is the most populated of these neighborhoods, so to deal with the real estate available in the downtown area alone, we can take it in easily digestible segments. The segment this series of articles will deal with is the west part of downtown. For our purposes, we can define west downtown as the area enclosed by Dufferin Street in the east, Jane Street in the west, Lake Ontario in the south, and Dundas Street in the north.

This section of downtown Toronto includes portions of several major streets, including the world-famous Bloor Street, several blocks of King Street West and Queen Street West, as well as Parkside Drive. There are a number of options as far as views go in this area, making it a popular location for the luxury homes Toronto boasts so many of. Real estate prices can be extremely high, with condos selling in the high hundreds of thousands and into the millions, especially if they have a view of something other than rail yards or old industrial equipment.

Though some developments indeed border commercial lands littered with oil tanks and old slurry mixers, these areas are being rapidly developed to take advantage of some of the area's highlights, including extensive parklands and water access. If trees and green spaces are your favorite things to gaze upon, parkland views can be obtained near Baird Park, Oakmount Park, Ravina Gardens, High Park, Perth Park, Sorauren Park, Sunnyside Park, Rennie Park, and Sir Casimir Gzowski Park. If blue and wet is more your style, water views can be found on the shores of Lake Ontario and Grenadier Pond.

There are little to no single family detached homes or row houses in the western portion of downtown Toronto. Though there were at one point, the desirability of the area has made it much more economically beneficial for a landowner sell the land to a condo or office tower developer than keep the house. There are a lot of businesses in this area that specialize in everything from realtor web design to banking, meaning that as far as traffic goes, it won't be just your neighbors in the other condo buildings you have to contend with, but also the thousands of workers commuting in from other parts of Toronto.

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