Last week I published Issue 1.
You had questions. Good ones.

Issue 2 is my answer.

City specific prices. Unit specific
rents. Principal repayment.
Appreciation. The full 25 year picture.

Everything Issue 1 left on the table.

$938,800

That is the actual Toronto benchmark
home price in February 2026 — released
by TREB this week.

Not $652,941. Not the national average
we used in Issue 1. The real Toronto
number for the city we were actually
talking about.

It changes the analysis. Here is how.

Issue 1 told half the story.
Here is the other half.

The monthly cash flow gap between
renting and owning is real. But it
is only one layer of a decision that
plays out over decades not months.
And when you add the missing layers
the picture changes significantly
for most Canadian cities.

Issue 2 uses city specific prices
and unit specific rents for a more
precise comparison. A family comparing
a three bedroom rental against a
townhouse purchase was never saving
$2,124 per month. Using city specific
prices and unit specific rents the
real monthly gap in Toronto lands
closer to $1,200 to $1,300.

Now add what monthly analysis misses.

Every month a Toronto homeowner is
building roughly $700 to $900 in
principal repayment. That money is
not leaving their household — it is
converting from cash into equity.
Net of principal the real monthly
cost difference for a Toronto condo
buyer drops to $400 to $600. That
is a very different number than
$2,124 and it is the number that
actually describes the monthly
financial experience of ownership.

Appreciation adds another layer.
Toronto homes have grown at roughly
4 to 6 percent annually over the
long term. At even 3 percent on a
$938,800 home that is $28,000 per
year building silently — or roughly
$2,300 per month in value growth.
Every dollar of that appreciation
is completely tax free under Canada's
principal residence exemption. No
TFSA or investment account offers
that treatment on gains of that size.

The forced savings argument is the
one most rent vs buy analyses skip
entirely and it may be the most
important one. A mortgage has 100
percent compliance. Nobody misses
a mortgage payment to buy concert
tickets or upgrade their car. TFSA
contributions are optional and
research consistently shows that
optional savings get skipped when
life gets expensive. The discipline
embedded in homeownership has real
financial value that no spreadsheet
captures properly.

The 25 year picture is where the
two paths diverge most dramatically.
At year 25 a homeowner's mortgage
is paid. Their housing cost drops
to property tax and maintenance —
a fraction of what they were paying.
A renter at that same point is paying
market rent that has been compounding
upward for 25 years. That divergence
in the final decade is the number
most analyses never show and it is
the strongest long term case for
homeownership in almost every
Canadian market.

Alberta continues to tell a
completely different story from
Ontario and BC. Edmonton at $451,459
and Calgary at $633,181 are the most
financially accessible major markets
in Canada right now. Both cities saw
price increases in February while
most Ontario and BC markets declined.
Unemployment is falling in Alberta
while rising in Ontario. The monthly
gap in Edmonton is near neutral and
the long term case for buying there
is stronger than anywhere else in
Canada right now.

The honest conclusion from the
complete model is this. Renting
makes sense when you cannot survive
the monthly gap, when your timeline
is uncertain, or when you are in a
market where the cash flow difference
is genuinely brutal for your unit type.
Buying makes sense when you have a
long horizon, can handle the early
years, and are in a market where
appreciation and equity building
reward the patience.

The spreadsheet never makes the
decision. Life does. But the data
should at least describe the real
choice — not an oversimplified one.