Ranking Toronto’s 6 Hottest Neighbourhoods (2026)

[00:00:00]Most homes are selling under asking in the city of Toronto. In fact, there is 35 distinct zones for Toronto real estate and there's six of them that are selling over asking. And not just like 1% over asking. There's one community in Toronto that right now the average property is getting 10% over the asking price. The best way to understand what's going on with different areas and different property types is really two things. Absorption rate, how many listings are active, how many are actually selling every month. That gives you a really good understanding of what's happening and also days on market. For the properties that actually sold, how long did it take them to sell?

[00:00:35]So, whether you're looking to buy a property, sell a property, or just interested in what Toronto real estate is doing, I'm going to show you the six communities that are bucking the trend right now and selling over asking. My name is Tom Story. Thank you for being here. If you enjoy these videos, give it a like, get subscribed to the channel.

[00:00:49]The goal is to get to 25,000 subscribers by the end of the summer. If you want to book a call with one of Toronto's top real estate teams, you can do that in the first link in the description. Now, it's not breaking news for me to tell you that most of Toronto real estate is selling under asking. 70% of the listings for sale are condos and none of them in fact, there's there's no area in the entire city where condos on average sold over asking, right? For the most part, condos are selling like asking price. So, why are there some communities that are still doing so well in an overall like not great market?

[00:01:26]Because there was six areas of the city of Toronto that last month on average for all the properties that sold, they sold over asking. Now, here's what happened. They didn't sell for more than they were worth. What happened is they listed low, had offer dates, and sold over that price. That asking price was probably never a price they were going to take. So, right away the thought would be like, well, this is right? Because like properties that's selling over asking, if they list manufacturally low, that doesn't matter, right? But the point is it works. So, my big thing is like if you tried this same strategy with a condo, the odds of it working are very, very low. But, if you know you have under two months of inventory in a specific pocket, this strategy works very well for sellers.

[00:02:09]And also, buyers are not willing to play this game unless they know they're in a competitive market. The six neighborhoods that sold over the asking price have a few things in common. I would call them like first choice neighborhoods. These are really the six areas that most of our up sizer clients when they are selling their condo or their townhouse, they're identifying one of these six zones as the place they want to go next. First reason why is they're still close enough to downtown in terms of getting back to your job or the anchors in your life or the things that are important to you. Number two, which is extremely important these days, is school districts. They have great schools. And number three, a lot of people that are buying in these neighborhoods, it's because they're family-friendly. So, what you get is the type of buyer profile is not an investor, they're not looking in their spreadsheet before they make their offers. These are emotional buyers buying to raise their families. So, you're buying into a neighborhood that's mostly end users and not tons of investors, which is just completely different than the condo market. Okay, so let's go through each area and show you what is doing very well right now.

[00:03:13]So, what you're looking at here is a map of Toronto, but you're seeing it as if you were a real estate agent. So, when I mentioned that there's 35 distinct zones, what I mean is when you see CO1, CO8, EO1, EO3, there's 35 areas across the city that you can see here. C just means central, W means west, and E means east. So, let's start with the hottest pocket of the city is EO1. So, last month on average, properties that sold in EO1 sold for 110% of the asking price. So, 10% higher than the asking price. This is mostly because this area here has a lot of semi-detached homes, and semi-detached homes are by far the hottest property type in the city. And then when you take the hottest property type in the city and put it in the hottest area of the city, you get these type of numbers. So, if we really break it down here to the different communities, right? You got North Riverdale, you got South Riverdale, you got Blake Jones, you got Greenwood and Coxwell. This area here of EO1 is by far, and it's actually not even close, the hottest area of the city. So, buyers that are looking to buy properties in this area, even though the general Toronto real estate market is not doing amazingly, like that's that's not a big statement to make at this point, this area you're going to very, very likely be in competition, especially if you're looking to buy a freehold property. Now, the next area is actually right beside it. Then you've got EO2. So, EO2 kind of has three distinct areas. You've got the Beaches, you've got East End Danforth, and you've got the Woodbine Corridor. So, the Beaches here, you've got the kind of if we just zoom in here, what you can see here is this line here is showing East End Danforth. So, this would be like upper Beaches. This would be what your typical Beaches would be, and then you've got the Woodbine Corridor in here.

[00:05:05]Same idea. I mean, you know, I don't have to be the first one to tell you that the Beaches is a neighborhood a lot of people want to live in because it's great to raise families and has great schools as well.

[00:05:15]And and you're close to the water, and then that's pretty nice in the summer.

[00:05:18]This zone right here for the properties sold last month on average sold for 105%.

[00:05:23]So, 5% over the asking price, and again, it's mostly driven by semi-detached detached properties. So, when you get more property specific in this, what we're seeing in the numbers is that detached homes are selling for basically asking or a little bit higher depending on the situation, but the areas with the semi-detached properties are driving all the competition right now, because you're getting into these same areas but paying a significantly lower price than you would be with a detached property.

[00:05:52]You can probably guess where I'm going for number three. So, EO3, Danforth Village, uh Player Estates, Broadview North. EO3 is the third hottest pocket of the city for all the similar reasons that you're seeing. Now, it was at 104% of asking price for all the same reasons. So, it's not that hard to figure out as you kind of zoom out here.

[00:06:13]Okay, this is the downtown core. A lot of people that first, you know, lived in condos here want to upsize out to the east or the west, and they want to be as close as possible to the lifestyle that they had built here, but want to get all the other things they can get in these neighborhoods. So, EO1, EO2, and EO3 were three of the hottest pockets of the city and the three that represent the east side in what are the big six. But, what about all my West End people? Let's talk about what's going on in the West End. And you're going to see a bit of a trend here. So, can you guess what are the three hottest neighborhoods in the West End? Well, let's start with WO1.

[00:06:50]So, WO1, you got Roncesvalles, you got Parkdale, you got South Parkdale, you got Swansea. Like, just just great, great neighborhoods. High Park. As you go into WO2, you got the Junction, Bloor West Village, Junction Triangle, Dovercourt Village.

[00:07:08]For all the same reasons I talked about in the east end are why people want to live in these communities. And then, surprise, surprise, the third most popular is WO3.

[00:07:18]So, if we layer on the communities here, you can see WO3 is Caledonia-Fairbank, as Corso Italia, um Keelesdale-Eglinton, you got Junction area, High Park North, Bloor West Village. And then, if you look here, Swansea, High Park, Roncesvalles. These are all the areas that are still very, very much in high demand in an overall sluggish housing market. You know, anyone that's lived in Toronto for a long time would look at the data I showed you today and be like, "Yeah, we know. We get it, right? We have friends. We've tried to buy in these neighborhoods. We live in these neighborhoods." You might also be asking yourself, "Well, why are neighborhoods like Leaside not here? Why is Rosedale not here?" Because their price points actually start higher. And when they start higher, the offer date stuff doesn't happen as much. Like, it still exists in those markets, but when you're seeing stuff selling really like the hot zones here in all six of these areas is sub $1.5 million freehold properties. Pick your property type. It's usually semi-detached just based on the price points in the areas that we're looking at, but that's why they're doing so well. That's why you can list low, have an offer date, get 10 people that bid on your house, and sell for a price that maybe you're really happy with because there's not a lot to choose from. The stuff that is available moves very fast. And I actually think because the buyer profile of who's buying these homes, that's the type of buyer that typically has dual income, that has pretty good jobs, maybe has family help getting into the neighborhood, and they're buying because they want to get into a pocket for kids.

[00:08:50]Like, I can tell you my own situation. I used to live downtown for many years, and I loved it. I bought in one of these neighborhoods when I had my first kid, specifically to get into a school district area that we thought would be good for their education. So, like, this was my example, and I see this time and time again. Every single client we sold a condo to like 5 to 10 years ago, they're all calling us back, we're selling the condo, and then they say, "And we want to move to one of these six zones with many different neighborhoods in them."

[00:09:22]Hope you found that valuable. My name's Tom Story, and remember, home is where your story begins.