One city, many markets
A city has one median asking price and hundreds of school attendance boundaries. Measured inside the board-published boundaries, the gap between a city's cheapest and dearest catchment markets runs from just over 1× in the smallest markets we track to nearly 13× in Toronto. The six widest spans are written up below; all 37 markets that met the test are named in the method note.
- 37
- Markets that met the test
- 11.4×
- Catchment span
- 5.5×
- Catchment span
- 4.6×
- Catchment span
Toronto
- $788K
- Toronto median asking
- $450K · 29 homes
- Lowest-median catchment · George Webster Elementary School
- $5.1M · 34 homes
- Highest-median catchment · Denlow Public School
- 11.4×
- Catchment span
Why it made the Shortlist
Toronto's catchment span is the widest in this set. At the low end, St. Charles Garnier Catholic School's boundary is a condo-apartment market — four in five of its current listings are apartments; at the high end, Denlow Public School's York Mills boundary is detached houses almost without exception, at a median more than thirteen times higher. The live figures sit beside this entry; both come from the same inventory, inside boundaries the boards themselves publish.
We think Toronto's city-wide median is close to meaningless for a family shopping a specific catchment — it averages boundary markets that differ by more than an order of magnitude.
Both endpoints are mix, not magic: the low boundary is mostly condos, the high one mostly detached. Neither number says anything about what a comparable home costs across the line, or about the schools themselves.
Mississauga
- $850K
- Mississauga median asking
- $440K · 24 homes
- Lowest-median catchment · St Catherine of Siena School
- $3.1M · 29 homes
- Highest-median catchment · Clarkson Public School
- 7.2×
- Catchment span
Why it made the Shortlist
Mississauga's lowest-median catchment, St. Catherine of Siena School's, is three-quarters condo apartments; its highest, Kenollie Public School's in Mineola, is overwhelmingly detached. The two sit nearly eight times apart — the live medians are beside this entry — while the city publishes one median between them.
We read Mississauga as the clearest suburban case: the city median lands on almost no actual boundary market — most catchments sit well above or well below it.
The low endpoint's inventory is thin relative to the giants — check the current count beside the figure. As always, the span is a mix statement, not a school-quality statement.
Oakville
- $1.5M
- Oakville median asking
- $631K · 55 homes
- Lowest-median catchment · Captain R. Wilson Public School
- $3.5M · 108 homes
- Highest-median catchment · St. Vincent Catholic Elementary School
- 5.5×
- Catchment span
Why it made the Shortlist
Oakville carries one of Ontario's highest city medians, yet Pilgrim Wood Public School's Glen Abbey boundary currently sits at the bottom of the table — its active listings lean condo apartment — while St. Vincent Catholic Elementary's boundary, detached almost throughout, sits at the top at more than six times the price.
We think Oakville is where the point matters most practically — and Pilgrim Wood is the proof that the low endpoint is a mix fact, not a desirability fact: a marquee Glen Abbey catchment sits at the bottom purely because its current inventory happens to be condos.
Catchment inventory moves quickly at this scale; the endpoints can swap with a normal week of listings. The drift notes on this page will say so when they do.
Vaughan
- $1.1M
- Vaughan median asking
- $565K · 148 homes
- Lowest-median catchment · Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Elementary School
- $2.8M · 43 homes
- Highest-median catchment · Kleinburg Public School
- 5.0×
- Catchment span
Why it made the Shortlist
Vaughan pairs Maple Creek Public School's boundary — by far the largest inventory in this write-up, almost all of it condo apartments — with Kleinburg Public School's near-uniformly detached boundary: a five-times span inside one municipality with a single published median.
We think Vaughan shows how fast the span opens where a city mixes high-rise growth corridors with estate subdivisions: the boundary map, not the municipal boundary, is the market map.
The low endpoint carries much more inventory than the high one here — the span is not symmetric in how many buyers it affects.
Hamilton
- $725K
- Hamilton median asking
- $400K · 67 homes
- Lowest-median catchment · Central Junior Public School
- $1.9M · 25 homes
- Highest-median catchment · Balaclava Public School
- 4.6×
- Catchment span
Why it made the Shortlist
Hamilton's span runs from Central Junior Public School's downtown boundary — two-thirds of its listings are condo apartments — to Balaclava Public School's rural boundary, where every current listing is detached: the same shape as the GTA cities, at half the prices.
We include Hamilton to show the span is not a Toronto-wealth artifact: it appears wherever one municipality contains genuinely different housing stocks, at every price level.
Hamilton's boundaries cover a very large rural area; low counts in outlying catchments are why our floor excludes most of them from the endpoints.
Burlington
- $900K
- Burlington median asking
- $500K · 29 homes
- Lowest-median catchment · Dr Charles Best Public School
- $2.3M · 30 homes
- Highest-median catchment · Kilbride Public School
- 4.7×
- Catchment span
Why it made the Shortlist
Burlington is this write-up's floor, and its span is still more than four times: Dr. Charles Best Public School's half-condo boundary at the bottom, Kilbride Public School's rural, mostly detached boundary at the top.
We chose Burlington as the control: even the tightest qualifying market in this write-up splits into boundary markets a single median cannot describe.
Both Burlington endpoints run on modest counts — the exact schools at the ends may rotate; the size of the span is the durable finding, not the names.
A city qualifies with at least 150 active for-sale listings (the same stability threshold that gates our city market reports) and at least two catchments carrying 20+ zoned active listings with a published median. A catchment qualifies as an endpoint with 20+ zoned active listings — four times the floor our league tables use, because a span quotes two single boundaries. The span is the highest qualifying catchment median divided by the lowest.
The qualifying set and each city's endpoints are arithmetic — highest and lowest qualifying median, no discretion. Which six cities to write up, and what to say about them, is our judgement: we chose the six widest spans. Spans across the full qualified set ranged from roughly 1.1× to 13× on the publication date — the smallest markets are nearly uniform, and this story is about the ones that are not. The span is a property-mix fact as much as a price fact, and each entry says which; nothing here claims a school causes its boundary's prices.
Also qualified, not written up here: Ajax; Aurora; Barrie; Bradford West Gwillimbury; Brampton; Caledon; Cambridge; Clarington; Cobourg; Collingwood; East Gwillimbury; Georgina; Guelph; Halton Hills; Innisfil; King; Kitchener; Markham; Midland; Milton; New Tecumseth; Newmarket; Orillia; Oshawa; Peterborough; Pickering; Richmond Hill; Wasaga Beach; Waterloo; Whitby; Whitchurch-Stouffville.
- Source
- Active For-Sale residential MLS® listings (TRREB/PropTx IDX), each resolved per listing against the school's board-published regular-track attendance boundary — the same hourly sweep behind every DistrictIQ school profile. Asking (list) prices only, never sold prices.
- Geography
- The Ontario markets DistrictIQ currently tracks — not every market in the province.
The counts on this page resolve from current for-sale inventory (as of September 2, 2026), so they move with the market. The neighbourhoods on this list and the analysis of each were fixed on August 28, 2026 and are not regenerated when inventory changes. Where a figure has moved since publication we say so beside it. If a figure and a sentence disagree, trust the figure.
EQAO results are provided for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as a ranking of school quality. Academic outcomes are only one factor families may wish to consider. EQAO results shown reflect the 2024–2025 assessment.
School and assessment data is sourced from the Ontario Ministry of Education, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), Ontario Open Data, and the applicable public and Catholic district school boards across the regions we cover (Southern Ontario).
School information — including school boundaries, eligibility, EQAO results, programs and enrolment — is provided for general informational purposes only and may be inaccurate or out of date. Boundaries, eligibility, programs and enrolment can change at any time. EQAO figures reflect past assessment results, are shown per test relative to the city-wide average, are not a ranking, and do not predict any student's outcome. Always confirm current school boundaries and eligibility directly with the applicable school board before relying on this information.