One of the most important details to figure out when buying a condo/house is how long you want to live in that property as this largely dictates what your search criteria will be.

We wanted to buy a condo that would last us at least 10 years or more with the ability to fit a baby whenever we decide to have one in the future.

As such, we had some pretty stringent requirements as to what we were looking for which made things quite interesting in a marketplace with very little inventory.

Here's all the criteria we had set out for our new condo:

  • 2-bed + den / 3-bed
  • 2-bath
  • 1000 Sq.Ft +
  • Kitchen with lots of countertops/storage for cooking & meal prep
  • Office for me
  • Office for Theresa
  • Dining space large enough for a 4-6 person table
  • Living room with ample space for seating/entertaining
  • Outdoor space (i.e. balcony or terrace)
  • Parking
  • Locker

Our ideal budget was $800,000 - 1,100,000 but $1 million was really our comfortable cutoff as it was getting a bit tight financially above that point.

As we had been living in Distillery District for the past 5 years, it was hard to leave the area as it offers so much in terms of transit & lifestyle.

You can easily get onto the DVP or Gardiner for getting out of the city (essential for me going to showings), take the 501 streetcar to King Station, bike along the Martin Goodman Trail + so much more.

Add on top of that some of the best cafes, restaurants & green spaces in the city and it can be quite hard area to beat!

We ultimately narrowed our search locations down to:

  • Distillery District
  • Corktown
  • St. Lawrence Market
  • Leslieville
  • The Beaches
  • Harbourfront
  • Regent Park

In the next episode I'm going to be sharing what units we looked at in these locations & how long it took us to buy a condo so be sure to check back later this week for that!

Have any questions about the buying or selling process?

Feel free to leave it in the comments section below!

Rylie C.