Moving from Toronto to Durham Region
Pickering, Ajax, Whitby and Oshawa sit on one GO line east of the city. What you get for the money is more house and more land. What comes with it is a driveway to clear and a lawn to keep.
Where Durham is and how you get back
Durham Region starts at the Rouge, immediately east of Scarborough, and runs along the lake through Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa and Clarington. All four of the main towns sit on the Lakeshore East GO line, which ends at Union. GO Transit publishes the timetable; the practical point for a buyer is that every one of the four is a single train with no transfer, and the difference between the nearest and furthest is about twenty minutes.
By car it is Highway 401 and, if you are paying for it, the 407. The 401 through Pickering and Ajax is one of the busiest stretches of road in the country, which is why the train carries most of the commuters who do the trip daily.
What the same money buys
The trade people actually make is a Toronto semi for a Durham detached. The same budget moves you from attached walls and a shared drive to a detached house, a private driveway and a back garden, usually with a garage. Prices climb as you come back west, so Pickering costs more than Oshawa, and the newer subdivisions north of the 401 cost more than the older streets by the lake.
Durham Region publishes population and development figures by town, and each town site carries its own planning maps: Pickering, Ajax, Whitby and Oshawa.
The costs that arrive with the land
A detached house on its own lot costs more to keep than a condo or a semi, and the difference is not in the mortgage. It is the driveway, the lawn, the gutters and the fence, all of which were somebody else's problem before.
Snow is the one that catches Toronto buyers out. Durham sits on the north shore of Lake Ontario and takes lake-effect snow that the city centre often misses. The towns plough the roads and clear some sidewalks; your driveway is yours, and a two-car driveway in Pickering or Ajax is a different job from a parking pad downtown. People either buy a snowblower or hire it out — snow removal in Pickering and snow removal in Ajax are typically sold as a season contract rather than per visit, which matters in a winter with twenty snowfalls and in one with five.
The lawn is the summer version of the same question. A Durham lot is bigger than a Toronto lot, so cutting, trimming and spring cleanup take longer than they did. Lawn care on a weekly contract is the usual answer for people who commute.
Heating a bigger house
Almost every house in Durham runs on natural gas, and a detached house with a basement has more volume to heat than the semi you left. A gas furnace lasts about 15 to 20 years, so a house built in the early 2000s subdivisions is at or near its first replacement. Ask how old it is, ask whether the water heater is owned or rented, and remember that a rental contract transfers to you on closing. Any company doing furnace repair in the region can date the unit from its serial number before you commit to a price.
Water, septic and the rural edge
North of the 407 the lots get larger and some of them come off municipal services. A house on a well and a septic system is a different purchase: the well needs testing, the septic needs an inspection of its own, and neither is covered by a standard home inspection. Durham Region handles water and sewer for the serviced areas and lists what is connected where.
What to check before you offer
Walk the lot and look at where the ground slopes. Count the driveway: how many cars wide, and how long. Find the furnace and the water heater and write down their ages. Ask the seller what they paid to heat the house last winter and what they paid to have the drive cleared, because those two numbers are the ones that change when you move east.