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Published - Nov 4th, 2009
By Pat Bolen
There may only be a couple of hours to travel between Toronto and Detroit, but the gap between the two cities is getting larger, and not just in the NHL standings.
Across the border, the stories are common about houses being sold for $100, while in Toronto, the real estate market is red hot, as was pointed out in the Toronto Star on the weekend, which said the Toronto market, juiced by low interest rates, has risen 34 per cent in the past year.
The sellers’ market was emphasized by a couple that bought their north Toronto home in 2002 for $265,000 and recently sold it for $600,000.
On the other side of the border, it may seem hard to find anything positive about houses that can be bought cheaper than Maple Leafs tickets, and are worth as much, but the renewal may already have started.
With Detroit having bottomed out, it has become a testing ground for what other cities may face as they come to terms with smaller populations and lower tax revenues. A pioneer spirit is taking hold in the city.
With phrases such as “urban farming,” and “rust belt chic,” Detroit is attracting a new breed of people who are not turned away by a lack of functioning government and services but drawn to it in the same way their ancestors moved west in search of land they could put their own stamp on.
And while it may not be the comfortable life of the 1950s or the affluence of the booming ’90s, a different lifestyle is being planted across the city as people are finding ways to survive in a manner their ancestors would have recognized.
As for the real estate boom on this side of the border in Toronto and Vancouver, as Garth Turner said in Grand Bend last week, Canada is usually about two years behind the United States and our turn is coming; whether we will find our pioneer spirit as Detroit did remains to be seen.
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