Shoebox apartment getting you down? Dreaming of a backyard? Your homeownership dreams don’t have to end with Toronto. Here are some of the best places to invest in real estate in Ontario right now.

• RELATED: This Is What $750,000 Buys You In The Toronto Real Estate Market

This Indie88 feature is presented with Pratt Homes

Hamilton

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With Toronto real-estate prices skyrocketing, Hamilton, its low unemployment rate and general affordability emerged as a popular alternative amongst young urban-keen homebuyers – arts scene, nightlife, and foodie appeal fully intact. It also helps that Toronto’s just a short hour away. Just don’t try to make “Toronto’s Brooklyn” happen.

Prince Edward County

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Over the past few years, the lush rural digs of the County – wineries, beaches, fields of fields – have become a place of refuge and renaissance for artists and creative types uplifting from urban apartments for farmhouses and land, and a wealth of agri-business, tourism, technology, media, and arts and culture industry sectors have sprung up with them in kind.

Guelph

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For city life with a relaxed town atmosphere, Guelph offers an arts-rich community just an hour’s drive away from Toronto. With a concentrated downtown budding with small businesses, access to farmers’ markets and cultural amenities like festivals (Hillside, Guelph Jazz Festival, Kazoo! Fest), lectures, and live theatre, it historically boasts some of the country’s lowest vacancy rates, and MoneySense indicates local home prices for 2017 averaged around $718.898.

Barrie

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With the second lowest unemployment rate of all Canadian cities (after Victoria), a wealth of new jobs in the manufacturing industry, and expanding finance, professional, and technical sectors, Barrie is emerging as one of Ontario’s hottest housing markets. A variety of transit options are available for residents commuting the hour and change to Toronto, and cottage country’s even closer.

Oakville

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Ranked the number one place to live in the 2018 edition of MoneySense’s annual Canada’s Best Places to Live list, Oakville is booming, though not without some caveats. With an average household income of $162,000, and the value of the average primary residence at $1.2 million, it’s certainly not the cheapest city in the country, but Oakville makes up for it offering access to the Toronto-area job market without downtown housing prices.

Photo by Tom Thain on Unsplash