Where else (within driving distance to Toronto) can you get a 3000 square foot house that looks like this, and is on the best street in Trenton, for $379,900?
Here are the details for the house above:
Or, how about this 3400 square foot, ravine lot house, which is directly across the street, with an asking price of $429,000 (down from $479,000):
Or, how about a waterfront house for $799,900? What do you get for that price in Toronto? Exactly!
But look what you get here, at the top of Prince Edward County:
Here is a typical Trenton house at a typical Trenton price, $204,900:
This four-bedroom house has a gas fireplace, inground pool, ceramic and laminate flooring as well as carpeting, central air, and a finished basement - just your everyday Trenton house with the extras that make life comfortable.
The drive to Toronto from the first two and the last house takes less than one and a half hours. These homes are in my neighbourhood and I've been known to get from my house to Don Mills in 1¼ hours. If not Don Mills (on a trafficky day - when isn't it trafficky once you reach Toronto?), then Scarborough. The first traffic I usually encounter is on the turnoff the 401 to the Don Valley Parkway. If you live in T.O. you know what's that like!
I don't work in real estate nor do I know any agents personally (although the guy who sold us our house still sends us a calendar at Christmas). I just scratch my head over why so many people have to live in Toronto when we've got fairly priced houses here, just an hour and a half away. Wasn't the computer supposed to make it easier to work anywhere?
Here, we live in suburbia within the country. We have Wal-Mart, Shopper's Drug Mart, Metro, Royal and TD banks plus Bank of Nova Scotia as well as local credit unions. "Big city" Belleville, with all the big box stores you could possibly want, is 20 minutes away. An even smaller town, charming-as-all-getout-Brighton, is only 13 minutes away. We have farms with horses and farmer's markets in the summer, and we're surrounded by water.
Best of all, we're right on top of wine country - Prince Edward County! And, of course, there's Sandbanks Provincial Park with 3 golden-sandy beaches.
Brighton has beautiful Presqui'ile Park, almost 4 square miles, a haven for migratory birds and monarch butterflies. There are almost 400 camping spots in the 8 campgrounds there. It's a fabulous park for walking in year-round and for cross-country skiing in the winter.
The region we live in is known as Quinte West and we've called it home for 6 years, after 32 years in Toronto (hubby 38 years). I would find it hard to go back. Whenever I drive in (four of our children still live there), I get stuck in traffic somewhere and have to wait in endless lines at the supermarket and other stores (which I avoid whenever I can). Here, whether in Wal-Mart or Metro, the "lines" consist of one to three people, tops. Same in Belleville. And Brighton, where I like to shop at Sobey's.
Why would anyone continue to torture themselves by staying in Toronto when they don't have to?
No comments:
Post a Comment