Minto Communities has launched Phase 2 of The Heights of Harmony development, consisting of townhomes of flexible floorplans. The development is close to Highway 407, extensive shopping, restaurants, health care and post-secondary education institutions.
Couple moves back to Oshawa, one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities and the GTA’s most affordable. It boasts urban amenities and access to green space.
Like many people who grew up in Scarborough, Ranjana Nayar and her husband Ajay migrated east. They moved to Ajax after they married and came to love Durham Region. As Ajax started to get denser and they were ready for a new home, they looked to Oshawa. It was an easy commute to Nayar’s teaching job in Ajax, had extensive urban amenities and access to green spaces. It’s where they want to spend their retirement years.
They bought their first house in north Oshawa in 2016 and sold it nearly two years ago.
In February, they will return to to the city, when they move into a new 3,000-square-foot home in the Heights of Harmony Phase 1, close to their previous neighbourhood. The family, including son Connor, 17, has been living in Ajax with Nayar’s father until their new home is ready.
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It’s the fourth home they’ve bought from Minto Communities, and Nayar and her husband took the option to have their home upgraded to “Net Zero Ready.”
These homes have superior energy efficiency and can be upgraded to Net Zero with solar panels. Net Zero homes are 80 per cent more energy efficient than typical new homes and produce as much energy as they consume.
“Oshawa is so up-and-coming and we knew we’d be happy there,” says Nayar. “We are two minutes from Hwy. 407, which is fantastic. We often go to Port Perry, and walk along Lake Scugog. There are country stores within minutes of us and we do a lot of hiking trails, including at Purple Woods, that’s minutes from our subdivision.”
She appreciates all the shopping that’s a five-minute walk from their neighbourhood, including a new Costco, Home Depot, grocery stores, restaurants and cafés. Health care was a priority and the city has a major, upgraded hospital in Lakeridge Health. It’s a 15-minute drive to Lakeview Park on the Lake Ontario waterfront with a beach, sports fields, mature trees, gardens, picnic area, museum and conference centre.
With a population of 175,000 (according to StatsCanada 2021 data), Oshawa is one of Canada’s fastest growing cities and has shed its blue-collar image to become an education/health science hub. The post-secondary education institutions — Durham College, Ontario Tech University, plus satellite campuses of Trent University and Queen’s University’s family medicine program — have a collective 30,000 post-secondary students. Lakeridge Health is the city’s major employer; General Motors’ roots still run deep and after the plant closed in 2019, it reopened in 2021 with a truck assembly that employs 3,200. Infrastructure improvements include extension of the Lakeshore East GO line and an export expansion project at Oshawa Harbour.
According to an August survey by consumer real estate portal Zoocasa, Oshawa is the most affordable city in the GTA. The average home price in November was $755,926, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board.
Minto recently released The Heights of Harmony Phase 2, with back-to-back towns starting in the $600,000s.
“This is Minto’s community in Oshawa and third in Durham, and we see Oshawa as welcoming and expecting growth,” says Vince Santino, company vice-president of development. “We try to offer a wide range of housing and the Heights of Harmony is no exception. We cater to move-up buyers and growing families and design with a generational context in mind, with flexible spaces.”
Santino says one of Minto’s staff grew up in Oshawa and has spent their whole life there. “There are a lot of other buyers who don’t want to leave the area. There are also those on the periphery who have been looking at Oshawa. Just west of our site is all the retail at the new RioCan centre, Durham College and the Ontario Tech University.”
Nayar’s son Connor is looking ahead to at post-secondary education options, and his first choice is the Tech University, minutes from where the family’s home, where he hopes to study biology. Ontario Tech was recently named Canada’s Research University of the Year, 2023, by Research Infosource, a research ranking organization.
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“We enjoy the diversity of the community,” says Nayar. “We have lifelong friends we made here, and we’re looking forward to making new friends.”
Correction - Jan. 10, 2024
This article was edited from a previous version that cited the population of Oshawa as 410,000. In fact, that is the population of the Oshawa Census Metropolitan Area - which includes Whitby and Clarington. The population of the actual city of Oshawa is 175,000.
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