Living in Toronto has never been cheap — at least not within my adult lifetime — but never has it been so expensive as right now. Seriously! RBC Economics warned just last week that the GTA saw its sharpest dip in affordability since the 1980s during Q2 of 2021.

Rents are still down on a year-over-year basis thanks to an unprecedented decline in prices amid the pandemic, but Toronto remains the second-most expensive city for renters in Canada (following Vancouver), and buying a place is straight out of the question for most people under 40.

Enabled by the freedom of working remotely, people have been fleeing the 6ix in droves over the past year to buy homes in markets where it doesn't take a household income of nearly $200,000 just to qualify for a mortgage.

Those of us still renting in the downtown core, while briefly blessed by a surge in supply, are now at the mercy of the market — whichever way it decides to swing (almost certainly up, experts are saying, as students, newcomers and office workers once again look for central places to live.)

So what do we do if we're not ready to buy a house in Kingston or Windsor? If we're not prepared to commit to buying any sort of property at all?

There's always the option of moving to another city as a renter — and Zumper's latest Canadian rent report suggests that you can save a heck ton of cash doing so.

Some realtors report that they're already seeing a new mass exodus of urbanite renters (as opposed to prospective home buyers), so there's no guarantee that prices for pads in cities like Windsor (which is hella hot right now) will stay so deliciously low... but as of right now, it's a solid option for people who can work remotely or get a new job four hours down the 401.

As of September 2021, here are all of the Ontario cities in Canada's 24 most-populous metro areas ranked from least to most-expensive in terms of median asking rents, courtesy of Zumper:

1. Windsor: one-bedroom $1,130, two-bedroom $1,450
2. London: one-bedroom $1,320, two-bedroom $1,639
3. Kingston: one-bedroom $1,400, two-bedroom $1,680
4. Hamilton: one-bedroom $1,450, two-bedroom $1,790
5. Kitchener: one-bedroom $1,480, two-bedroom $1,710
6. St Catharines: one-bedroom $1,500, two-bedroom $1,640
7. Ottawa: one-bedroom $1,500, two-bedroom $1,800
8. Oshawa: one-bedroom $1,560, two-bedroom $1,720
9. Barrie: one-bedroom $1,700, two-bedroom $1,850
10. Toronto: one-bedroom $1,800, two-bedroom $2,250