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Escaping from Toronto

Damon Ho

In recent years, Hong Kong's emigration problem has become a hot topic. For the majority of these emigrants, their hot picks mainly have been spreading over to countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States of America and Canada. Among of them, Toronto in Canada is a real hot spot other than British cities for Hong Kong people to emigrate. In the past decade, Toronto gained vigorous development and attracted huge amount of overseas immigrants.  Consequently, the local property prices have been skyrocketing over years.

 Manny landed immigrants from Hong Kong may find the property prices in Toronto are astonishingly high. Due to the large amount  of overseas immigrants and students, the local rental market is also stronger than expected. 

 Like most western cities, Toronto is high tax rate, and ordinary workers are hard to save money to pay the down pavement for the first time buying.  The high-priced properties have been drawn the complaining from the local peoples.   Three years ago, house prices jumped by 50% within two years, and it only has decreased by about 10% since last year.

 Due to the high house prices, more locals have moved out to other cities with lower property prices and living expenses. The growing figures have strengthened this tendency. This trend of fleeing Toronto has become new social phenomenon in recent years.

Most young Hong Kong landed immigrants will quickly discover that the local rent is also very high. Generally speaking, they have had to share to rent an apartment or a basement unit of a townhouse with two or three tenants.

The local minimum wage is approximately 15 Canadian dollars (about 90 Hong Kong dollars) per hour. Due to the high tax rate, it is not easy to save. The local sales tax is 13%, and the customers have to pay additional 10% tips for every meals they enjoy. A Hong Kong style breakfast meal costs about 13 Canadian dollars (about 80 Hong Kong dollars). So most families prepare their breakfasts at home from Monday to Friday.

Hong Kong young new immigrants, if they don't have their fathers’ support, they might need to spend one decade to save the down payment to buy a high-priced condominium or some low prices townhouses.

Nowadays many Hong Kong peoples move to the Greater Bay Area after retirement. Big cities like Toronto, the growing people tend to move to other cities before retirement. Wherever the Hong Kong people move now, they must have strong mentality, otherwise it will be difficult to adapt changing environment.

 
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