How housing in Toronto has changed since the last time the Blue Jays were in the World Series

An aerial view of Toronto is seen looking southwest in this 1993 image. (City of Toronto)

A lot has changed in Toronto since the Blue Jays have last competed in the World Series, more than three decades ago.

For one, the Skydome is now the Rogers Centre, and the capacity has dwindled from 50, 516 to 39,150 (for baseball games)—though the arena has also gone through $400-million renovations in recent years.

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Housing was also considerably more affordable in Toronto back in 1993.

Zoocasa recently published a report highlighting these differences, particularly in the housing industry. In 1993, the average home in Toronto sold for $206,490, based on data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. Adjusting for inflation, that would roughly cost $397,000 today.

The average price for a home in Toronto in September 2025 goes for $1,059,377, the report notes, reflecting a 417 per cent jump in prices since the Blue Jays’ last World Series championship.

Even rent was more reasonable in 1993. Based on data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a one-bedroom apartment cost $627 per month in October 1993 and a two-bedroom apartment cost $773 each month, which would be priced at around $1,206 and $1,487 respectively in today’s dollars.

The report notes the average rent for a one-bedroom in Toronto is about $2,295, as of September, and a two-bedroom was $2,941.

Canada, however, was in a deep recession in the early ‘90s, from March 1990 through May 1992, as a result of strict monetary policy, large budget deficits and inflationary pressures (meaning housing prices were decreased).

So, what factors drove costs up in Toronto from the last time the Blue Jays participated in the World Series?

For one, land values have gone up tremendously.

“Especially in cities like Toronto and Vancouver, and that’s been facilitated by making it a lot harder to build say apartments on a lot of residential parts of Toronto or Vancouver,” Carolyn Whitzman, senior housing researcher at the School of Cities, told CTV News Toronto.

Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute and professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto, explained a big swath of Toronto is zoned for single-family homes.

“Many single-family home neighbourhoods look almost identical to the way they looked in 1993 because zoning stayed the same,” Siemiatycki said, pointing to Riverdale, Leslieville and Lawrence Park as examples. “All of those are zoned in such a way that it’s very difficult, if not impossible to do substantial infill, until recently.”

To fly over Toronto now, one would be able to see how the city expanded, Siemiatycki said, as there would be neighbourhoods with newer high-rises.

“Much of the lower slung, residential, single-family home neighbourhoods, those have not changed. If you’re on the ground now, like biking up the street … they would look almost exactly the same,” Siemiatycki said.

Construction costs have also gone up, Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities noted, combined with development charges and taxes also contribute to higher costs.

“We’ve seen an acceleration of construction costs, and that is really because of the price of steel, primarily, but also other materials,” Chapple told CTV News Toronto.

“Across the residential housing market, across the entire world, people often point to labour and there’s probably some truth that labour costs have, particularly for specialized trades, gone up, and that relates often to the immigration flow (and) whether we’re able to get enough skilled construction workers from abroad.”

Key differences between World Series

Outside of Toronto’s skyline changing over the years, looking denser now with taller buildings and areas along the waterfront filled in.

“There was no City Place… that area around Bremner, around what is now the Scotiabank Arena, none of that was there,” Siemiatycki said. “King West was just starting to come on as well as King East, even North York Centre was in the process of being built. The region really grew upwards … we became much more of a vertical city over that 30-year period.”

Toronto’s condos in the 2020s are significantly smaller. Data from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, published last December, says median condo size in the 1970s was around 965 square feet but it decreased by 32 per cent by 2024, at around 658 square feet. Single-detached homes have grown in that time from a median size of 1,317 square feet to 2,383 square feet in the 2020s.

“Another big thing that’s changed since 1993 is non-market housing,” Whitzman said. “That was about six per cent of the total homes in Canada. Now, it’s about 3.5 per cent.”

In 1993, Whitzman said the federal government at the time withdrew its funding for social housing construction, with Ontario following suit two years later.

The city was also significantly smaller in 1993. There were about 4.6 million people living in the Greater Toronto Area then, according to Statistics Canada. Now, based on the latest data available from 2024, there are 7.6 million residents.

And though the general costs of living have soared, average incomes in Ontario have not risen at the same pace. In 1993, the average income in the province was $48,000 (roughly $90,000 when adjusting for inflation) and 30 years later, Statistics Canada says its about $60,800.

“We haven’t increased that much in income at all, it’s been just a few percentage points as opposed to the doubling of housing prices,” Chapple said.

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A CivicAction report, published in June, noted that with Toronto’s annual median income at $100,400, the price-to-income ratio for housing is 11.8 times higher than that income, meaning homebuyers with that income would need to dedicate 76.9 per cent of their salary toward mortgage payments on an average priced home in the city.

Whitzman said it has become a lot harder for low-to-middle class households to afford a place to live in Toronto.

“It’s a really different landscape and in that particular way, things have gone downhill since the last time that Toronto was in the World Series,” Whitzman said.