The wild home prices of every Toronto area region. (And, wow, Georgina) – The Globe and Mail

The Town of Georgina boasts the fastest growth in prices of any region in the Greater Toronto Area, as home buyers push further north up Highway 400, many facing a daily commute of 80 kilometres each way to work in the city.

Fewer than 400 properties have sold so far this year in Georgina, which sits at the edge of the GTA on the shore of Lake Simcoe.

But their benchmark price has surged to $544,400.

That’s certainly nowhere near the most expensive in the region but the 42.4-per-cent annual increase in March is the fastest among the communities in and around Canada’s biggest city, according to the latest statistics from the Toronto Real Estate Board.

And it’s a telling sign of the Toronto bubble, which the Ontario government moved on this morning with a 16-point plan to hose the city down.

“These are the lengths people have to go to to find their affordability,” Coldwell Banker sales rep Michael Plomaritis, who recently sold a property on Georgina’s Shangri-La Lane, said of the push north.

It’s not just the GTA, of course. Prices are surging across Southern Ontario, where affordability in some regions is the worst in a generation.

Here’s a look at the price growth in Toronto and neighbouring communities:

Soaring prices “definitely makes things harder,” Mr. Plomaritis said, adding he’s frequently asked by people if, as an agent, he’s loving the surge.

“We actually hate it,” said the sales rep, who works in and around Toronto, including Georgina. “Normalcy’s great for us.”

Mr. Plomaritis is no stranger to bidding wars amid a price surge that has been “really hard on our clients.”

Today’s Ontario plan comes on top of earlier federal tax and mortgage measures that have clearly “done little to ease overheating risks in key parts of the country,” said Royal Bank of Canada senior economist Robert Hogue.

“In fact, because the Toronto and other Southern Ontario markets – Canada’s most populated area – have become even hotter and more detached from market fundamentals, that risk has risen quite noticeably in recent months,” he said in a report.

Here’s what Toronto looks like: