Rent is literally throwing your money away.
Even if there's a market correction in Toronto, it's the safest housing market in the country and a future-proof investment. Something like 70% of immigrants go to Toronto, so demand will always be there for many decades to come & they'll never be able to build houses fast enough to keep up (condos, well who knows, still doubtful).
Well... maybe. But rents are taking a historically massive chunk of income and you have to have a household income of 4X the average to buy a small house. It doesn't seem sustainable.
A small tick, like a government drastically reducing immigration or airbNb regulations coming in or Chinese govt changing policy on foreign investment...
Now - given that I have shown myself to have zero vision in these things anyway - why do you think it's safe beyond the immigration thing ?
Worst case is a correction, your house goes down in value, maybe you could renegotiate your mortgage for less, then value goes back up eventually. Market has cooled a bit so I think you're fine, and no correction is worth throwing away 36k a year on rent.
Well at $36k per year you are right....