As average Toronto home prices remain firmly above the $1,000,000 mark, a few bastions of relative affordability remain within the second-most expensive city in Canada.

You just have to know where to look.

Home prices are declining at a breakneck speed, the average cost of a detached home falling by over 21 per cent year-over-year in January 2023. But it will still cost an average of $1,270,000 to purchase a detached home in the city, and in some areas, median prices even top the $2-3 million mark.

So where are the best parts of a city for first-time homebuyers to get a foothold on the ultra-exclusive Toronto real estate market?

A new report from Zoocasa analyzed the median detached house price in 34 Toronto neighbourhoods (technically the broader MLS map zones) and identified the cheapest areas of the city to look for a new home.

Of the 34 MLS zones, only two areas had median home prices that still registered below the $1 million mark, indicating that some of the best deals on detached homes can be found in the city's western reaches.

At the far northwest pocket of the city, MLS zone W10 — which includes the Rockcliffe-Smythe and Keelesdale-Eglinton West neighbourhoods — is the second-cheapest area to own a detached home in the city, with a January 2023 median detached home price of $930K.

But the cheapest area of Toronto for detached homebuyers is the W03 MLS zone — home to the Rexdale-Kipling and West Humber-Claireville neighbourhoods — where the January 2023 median detached price was just $843K.

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, five MLS zones in the central areas of Toronto registered median detached home prices exceeding $2 million, including one ultra-posh neighbourhood where the median detached home price exceeds $3.5 million.

MLZ zone C09, which contains the affluent Rosedale and Moore Park neighbourhoods, has a January 2023 median detached home price of $3.55 million.

To buy a home in this exclusive neck of the woods, you will have to fork over a down payment of roughly $710,000, which is itself enough to buy some of the city's cheapest homes.