Home Prices on the GO Train Line (Toronto to Niagara)

GO’s Lakeshore West rail line opened in 1967, making it one of the regional transit system’s first services in southern Ontario. Here’s what homes cost along each stop of the way.

By Josh Sherman | 2 minute read

Purchasing a home in a neighbourhood with a GO station can allow you to work in Toronto while benefitting from more living space in a suburban community outside of the city, but it might come at a relative premium.  

Drive until you qualify — that’s a common bit of real estate advice that recommends you look at homes farther and farther away from a city to find lower prices. But those who call the Greater Toronto Area their home have another option: ride until you qualify.

The regional GO Transit network, which operates seven rail corridors, gives commuters in the GTA and beyond an alternative to gridlock with ridership totalling 57.4 million annually. Proximity to a GO station has become a major selling point for homebuyers who need a direct connection to Toronto but can’t afford its prices (or perhaps want a larger, suburban property, for example).

To give potential homebuyers a sense of what homes cost along one of GO Transit’s busiest rail routes, Wahi analyzed home price data for every neighbourhood that has a GO station on the popular Lakeshore West corridor, which connects Toronto with Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, Hamilton, St. Catharines, and Niagara Falls. Wahi compared median home prices, including houses and condos, for the first half of the year. We’ve presented the findings on a map of home prices at each stop on GO Transit’s Lakeshore West line:

The Most Expensive Go Station to Live Near Is in Mississauga  

Perhaps surprisingly, the GO station with the most expensive neighbourhood is not found in Toronto. It’s actually in Port Credit, located on Mississauga’s waterfront where the median home sale price was $1,340,000. That’s followed by the Toronto neighbourhood of Mimico, which the local GO station is named after and had a median price of $1,160,000. Mimico just edged out Clarkson, also in Mississauga.

Two Downtown Toronto stations, Union and Exhibition, may seem like relative bargains with prices at $710,000 and $705,000, respectively. But there’s an explanation for this lower price point. The types of homes that you’ll find for sale in the Downtown Toronto neighbourhoods of the Entertainment District and Liberty Village heavily influences the pricing, Wahi CEO Benjy Katchen explains. “The downtown Toronto prices might seem low in comparison to other places near GO stations, but the neighbourhoods in the city’s core are mainly condo communities,” he says.

Home buyers looking for a real bargain can check out Corktown, the location of the Hamilton GO Centre, a major station that provides both bus and rail connections. In Corktown, the median price of a home was $393,000, making it the most affordable neighbourhood along the Lakeshore West corridor.

Corktown is also the only neighbourhood with a Lakeshore W that’s affordable with an average Ontario household income, according to Wahi’s recently released Road Map to Housing Affordability. With average household income of about $100,000, the maximum affordable home price is $435,001, assuming a 20% downpayment, five-year fixed-rate mortgage, and a 25-year loan. “While there’s no question Ontario is in the midst of a housing crisis, a neighbourhood like Corktown in Hamilton shows that if homebuyers extend their searches to places just outside the GTA, it’s still possible to find an affordable home for households earning an average combined income,” Katchen adds.