This Ontario city's homes cost half the Toronto average but nobody is buying them

Despite a decline in listing prices and properties selling below asking en masse, Toronto is still by no means a cheap place to call home.

The November 2022 average selling price of $1,050,788 is far beyond the price range for many who live in Canada's largest city, which has stoked demand in smaller Ontario markets that offer comparably affordable living.

One example is Windsor, the only major city on the Detroit River that holds the proud distinction of not being Detroit.

It's a place where the average home will run you just $535,628, yet few people seem to be buying them right now.

The Southwestern Ontario city experienced a surge in demand and prices throughout the pandemic years, though several successive interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada have put a damper on the market in recent months as property sales plummet across the region.

A new RE/MAX report covering the turbulent market in Motor City Jr. cites data from the Windsor-Essex County Association of Realtors, showing a staggering 44 per cent decline in residential property sales in October, with just 407 units sold in the metro area of over 400,000 residents.

Home sales during the first ten months of 2022, at just under 5,600 units, represented a 20 per cent drop compared to the same period in 2021.

Overall prices are still holding steady in the last quarter of the year, though condo apartment and townhome unit prices saw significant spikes during this period.

It will now cost you an average of $636,000 to own a single-family home in the region, a 5.1 per cent increase over October 2021. Townhome prices leapt by over 27 per cent to $453,600, and apartment prices have climbed by over 18 per cent to $404,200.

But the experts at RE/MAX Canada suggest change could soon be on the horizon, its report stating that "a correction and stabilization are now succeeding the frenzy of 2020 and 2021," as the area's housing market "is now going through a downturn."

Windsor may be cheap by Toronto standards, but its relatively low housing prices are still astronomically higher than what you'll find just across the Detroit River and U.S./Canada border.

Sure, Detroit is Detroit, and nobody needs that in their lives, but when the average Motor City home price sits at just shy of $70,000 USD, even Windsor residents have a considerably cheaper place to turn to when the market inevitably prices them out.