Oakville, Ontario: The Abundance of Gratuitous Affluence (Part II)

The Town of Oakville has a gratuitous annual income per household. In 2006, the average household income was just under $90,000 per year per household compared to the provincial average of $62,000.

Today, the Town of Oakville has 41% of its households with incomes greater than $100,000 per year and nearly two-thirds of all Oakville households have incomes greater than $70,000 per year in 2001 dollars. Only 11% of the households have incomes of less than $20,000 (Oakville Economic Development Association).

This extremely large household income level places Oakville as the most affluent city or town in Canada. Oakville will periodically rank a close second to places like Markham, ON, Vancouver, BC or Victoria, BC (where new money wealth is growing rapidly). Almost every year during the last 30 years, Oakville has been the leading household income community in Canada.

To better illustrate, this prosperity oxymoron of my current home town, the average selling price of homes in Oakville in 2005 according to the Oakville, Milton and District Real Estate Board (OMDREB) was $520,000. The average Ontario home sold for only $205,000 during this same time period. This provincial average is less than one half the value of an average Oakville home.

Less than one kilometer down the street from me is Canada’s most expensive single family home. It took over two years to build, is a massive 32,000 square feet and when completed the Edgemere Estate was listed for sale at $45,000,000 Canadian. (This dollar amount is equal to the TOTAL building cost of the last two secondary schools built in the Region of Halton in 2002 and 2003.) This is affluence run amok! Couldn't the guy who built it as a family home live in it or was it too small?

As you well may have guessed, Oakville is THE executive bedroom home to many of Canada’s large corporate CEO’s and senior executives. It also attracts the homes of many professional sport team athletes, as well as many of the partners in Canada’s largest legal firms and senior executives of Canada’s banks. The owners and senior executives of Canada’s publishing and financial communities reside here (newspapers, banks, investment banks, investment markets and insurance) as well as key partners aqnd principals in such areas such as consulting and accounting firms can be found here. Many senior executives make Oakville their domestic bedroom community. Oakville is the suburban home to much of Canada’s old money.

Get on the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), drive east for 20 minutes and you will arrive at the Central Business District (CBD) of Toronto. As for commuting to Toronto daily, I did the one hour plus commute into the city for too many years and do not miss the stop and go traffic grind one must tolerate each way.







Technorati Tags:
,
,
,
,





0 Response to "Oakville, Ontario: The Abundance of Gratuitous Affluence (Part II)"