House Hunting in Canada: A Victorian Italianate Jewel Outside Toronto

A Four-Bedroom Italianate House Near Toronto

$1.98 MILLION (2.495 MILLION CANADIAN DOLLARS)

This four-bedroom house with a distinctive central tower sits on a hill in the historic town of Port Hope, about an hour east of Toronto, on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Built in 1875 by the proprietor of a billiards saloon, the home is known as one of the “three sisters” — brick homes of similar late-Victorian design aligned in a row above Augusta Street — said Martha Grant, an agent with the Heaps Estrin Team, which has the listing.

The current owners “have never stopped working on this property since they bought it in 2014,” Ms. Grant said. “It’s been a labor of love for them.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

real estate board reported 7,283 sales in the greater Toronto area in May, down 39 percent from May 2021, and down 9 percent from the previous month. The overall average selling price for all property types was 1.21 million Canadian dollars ($962,000), down roughly 7 percent over the previous two months.

The two trends suggest a more balanced market, which should allow for “a little more negotiating power for people still active in the marketplace,” Mr. Mercer said.

Toronto’s prime central neighborhoods, including Rosedale, Lawrence Park and Forest Hill, remain highly competitive, as they have a chronic dearth of available homes, said Cailey Heaps, the president and C.E.O. of the Heaps Estrin Team. According to the real estate board, a detached house in the city currently averages just under 2 million Canadian ($1.59 million), while a condo averages around 800,000 Canadian ($635,000).

In addition, the luxury market in general continues to perform “exceptionally well,” Ms. Heaps said. “Buyers understand the scarcity of the product they’re looking for.”

has proposed a two-year moratorium on foreign buyers as a way to bring down home prices for residents, Mr. Powell said.

Foreign buyers anywhere in Ontario must pay a “speculation tax” of 20 percent on the purchase of property. That’s on top of the provincial transfer tax paid by all buyers; the rate ranges from 0.5 to 2.5 percent, based on the value of the property. In addition, buyers in the city of Toronto must pay a municipal transfer tax of roughly the same amount.