It can be very difficult to pick any one “best city” in this beautiful country. How do you decide? Do you go by weather? Housing values? Employment numbers? For our purposes we first went mainly by size, in both land size and/or population, and then discovered a recurring trend. The biggest cities in Canada also happen to be the most booming cities. And whether it’s real estate or employment opportunities that you’re looking for, these are, according to our research, the ten most booming cities in Canada:
10.)Vancouver
9.) Hamilton
8.) Victoria
7.) Toronto
6.) Quebec City
5.) Montreal
4.) Calgary
3.) Ottawa
2.) Regina
1.) Edmonton
When looking at these ten huge cities in Canada, we took several different factors into consideration. With the housing market in such an unpredictable state in Canada right now, and with so many people taking property values into consideration, average home prices and returns on rental properties were one of the first things we considered (and also one of the main determining factors in choosing our ten best cities, too.)
With the instability of many housing markets in the country, and the number of jobs that have been lost as of March 2013, employment is another huge factor when people are considering where the top cities in Canada are. Because of such, employment and unemployment levels were also one of the biggest factors taken into consideration for these purposes.
Average salaries, population growth, rates of inflation, cost of living, and more, it’s all here in our breakdown of the biggest and most booming cities in Canada; and all of it points towards these ten cities as being the current top cities in the country!
Within these top ten cities, there were four that were neither the best nor the worst in any category except housing and rental values, where they all ranked as some of the best. Those cities were Vancouver, Hamilton, Victoria, Toronto, and Quebec City. While Toronto and Vancouver still have big corrections coming their way in the housing market, these two cities will always be some of the biggest and best places to live. And after a couple of years when both have undergone a correction, you’ll see a booming marketplace here once again.
Montreal appears fifth on the list, as this city has a fairly robust housing market at the moment, and they also have the lowest cost of living out of our top ten cities. However, they also have the lowest average salaries, which might be why it doesn’t cost a fortune to live in Montreal.
Ottawa has the highest salaries in the country and doesn’t have very high cost of living or a large crime rate. However, with a housing market that’s also set to cool within the next couple of years, Ottawa only makes number three on our list.
When it comes to the battle of Alberta, many believe that Calgary is the best place to live currently, but in fact our research turned up differently. While Calgary’s housing market may be at an all-time high, inflation and the cost of living here are also rising at very quick rates, which makes it not only one of Canada’s biggest cities, but also one of its most expensive. Edmonton on the other hand has a low inflation rate and places low in categories such as crime rate and cost of living, as well.
It’s for all of these reasons that Edmonton places top on our list of the best places to live in Canada; and why it even beats out Regina, located in Saskatchewan, which is the province probably seeing the biggest boom of them all right now.
