#centreville

I just found two different listing on the internet as I was making market research for my essay on suburban spaces, writing about house prices and quality. My broad web search led me to find two architecture realities that demonstrate how the real estate landscape is odd and sometimes on steroids.

The house on the left is a beautiful Victorian home located in Maryland in the US, the asking price is US $1.19 million, while the one on the right is a McMansion outside Toronto going for CDN $3.8 million. What’s going on here?

The Canadian housing market is gone crazy with prices that aren’t stopping soaring not even through the crisis between 2007 and 2008. Toronto Listings are filled with small 2 bedrooms 1 bathroom going for 600k at least for homes built forty years ago.

Off course the two locations are geographically different and housing markets might follow alternative priorities; however, it’s shocking seeing how much value some new homes have reached despite their bland style and cheap construction material.

This other listing featured another beautiful home in Seattle with lake view and compared to the above house outside Toronto it still cheaper by $1 million and change. Despite the styles, this Victorian house has been built with far better quality than any multi-million dollar mansion in 2017, and it has retained its aesthetic value for over a century while newer homes won’t last fifty years.

Communities outside the city built with the principle of traditional craftsmanship in the 18th and early 20th century have contributed in making the urban landscape better looking. Essentially they make neighbors vibrant, original, and worth caring about. Today, instead, we face the sad reality of cookie-cutter homes built left and right non-stop with the cheapest materials which are too expensive and out of the reach of consumers and add no particular values to communities.