You want to be sure you're going to be happy and financially stable in a city before you do something drastic like take out a mortgage. Toronto, Canada is excellent for jobs and real estate, but don't just buy a home there because it's what all the cool kids are doing. Make sure there's not another city nearby, like Windsor, Ontario, that you feel you like better. To give you some ideas on how the two compare, here's the lowdown on Windsor, Ontario real estate.

Since the city is located in the extremely industrialized corridor that runs from Detroit all the way up to Quebec City, you may be surprised to know that the feel of Windsor isn't all smokestacks and factory machines. In fact, its nickname is "the Rose City," which stems from its expanses of beautiful parkland, which is something you just don't usually see when you're looking for a house for sale in Mississauga. The city's motto is "the river and the land sustain us" and this is true of residents' spirits as well as their bodies.

Windsor's beautiful Detroit River and Lake Erie vistas actually manage to be elegant and uplifting without also lifting the real estate prices out of the realm of affordability. In fact, the cost of living here is just 92, eight points lower than the US national average and significantly less than you would be looking at if you bought a condo at 761 Bay Street in Toronto. The average price to buy a house or condo in Windsor is $162,000, a number which goes up and down depending on the neighborhood you choose.

Though the city has its fair share of worker's housing that has sprung up due to its association with the auto industry, these neighborhoods are far from the only ones you can expect to find. The city's size and age mean you'll have more choice than if you were looking for a Burlington, Ontario home for sale. You've got quaint historic neighborhoods like Sandwich which were separate towns before being engulfed, model neighborhoods from the 1960s like Forest Glade, brand new pre-planned suburbs like Southwood Lakes, and everything in between. The only difficulty is choosing between them.

One of the factors that may play into your decision on which neighborhood to buy into will be which type of home you're looking for. While some neighborhoods, like Forest Glade, are mixed-use, with a combination of detached homes, town houses, condos, and rental apartments, others are almost exclusively one or the other. If you were buying Brampton condominiums you would look downtown, but here you have your choice of several neighborhoods. Town houses, however, tend to be concentrated in Fontainebleau and Roseville Gardens.

We would like to thank Moishe Alexander, Canadian Funding Corporation for his generous support of this web page.