The era of full-time remote work is fading fast, and its ripple effects are starting to shake up the Toronto real estate market. With major employers and the provincial government increasingly mandating that employees return to the office three, four, or even five days a week, the pendulum that swung hard toward the suburbs is now swinging back toward the core.
The pendulum is swinging back downtown
During the work-from-anywhere boom, the math was simple: if you never had to commute, why not buy further out and get more house for your money? Buyers chased space, and the distant suburbs saw eye-watering price gains as a result.
That logic is quietly unravelling. As workers who fled the city get called back, demand for centrally located housing is climbing again. We are seeing leasing activity pick up and downtown condo and rental demand firm up after a long cooldown. The value of being close to a transit line is suddenly worth real money again.
Who wins? Transit-connected beats far-flung
Here is the nuance most headlines miss. This is not simply “downtown good, suburbs bad.” It is about commute friction. The outer stretches of Durham or Simcoe that boomed on the promise of permanent remote work now face softening demand, because the daily drive erodes exactly the freedom that justified the distance.
The neighbourhoods that hold up best are the transit-connected ones. And this is where I get a little biased about my own backyard: Cliffcrest, Cliffside and the wider Scarborough Bluffs sit on the GO line with a genuinely reasonable run into Union, while still giving you a backyard, a driveway and a community that feels like a town. You get the commute of a city dweller with the lifestyle of a suburbanite. If you have never looked seriously at this pocket, my breakdown of why Cliffside is Toronto’s best-kept secret is a good place to start.
What this means if you are buying
If your employer has tightened the leash, run the real numbers before you commit to anything. A home 90 minutes out that you love on Saturday can feel very different at 7am on a Tuesday in February. Factor the commute, the transit cost and your own sanity into the price. If you are weighing east-end options, my honest take on considering Durham Region lays out the trade-offs street by street. And when you are ready to actually look, that is what I do every day — browse recent listings or tell me what you are after.
What this means if you are selling
If you own in a transit-connected pocket, this shift is working in your favour, and the right marketing can turn that tailwind into a stronger offer. If you are further out, pricing and presentation matter more than ever; the buyer pool is more cautious, so you cannot rely on momentum to do the work for you. Either way, a proper pricing strategy is the difference between a quick sale and a stale listing. That is the core of how I approach selling a home.
My take
It is still early, and nobody should make a seven-figure decision on a single trend line. But for a city that genuinely runs on its downtown core, the direction of travel is clear: proximity and transit are back in fashion. If you want to know what that means for your specific situation (your job, your budget, your neighbourhood) is exactly the conversation I love to have.
Thinking through a move and not sure how the return-to-office shift affects you? Book a free, no-pressure call and let us run your numbers together.
If return-to-office is part of your calculation, current GO Transit schedules are worth checking — commute times shift the math on which neighbourhoods make sense.