[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto buyers drive real estate prices up in Cambridge, Kitchener, Guelph"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC News' Colin Butler reports on how Toronto buyers are pushing up prices in the wider Golden Horseshoe.

Industry watchers predict Toronto buyers will continue to drive prices up in Waterloo Region's already red-hot real estate market, even as "for sale" listings traditionally slow in the winter.

It follows a summer that delivered month after month of record-breaking sales figures in Waterloo Region fuelled by low interest rates, a strong local economy and a steady influx of buyers from the Toronto area, priced out of an increasingly expensive big city market.

Benjamin Tal, the deputy chief economist with CIBC World Markets, said as the price real estate mushrooms in Toronto, young couples are now willing to go further afield to get themselves a slice of the Canadian dream.

"They simply go on the 401 and start driving until they find something they can afford and then they stop and we're seeing a lot of this now," he said.