Buying a slice of land to call your own in or around Toronto has become outrageously if not prohibitively expensive.

Prices have skyrocketed in the recent housing boom years that have seen Greater Toronto Area skylines transformed, but it's really just an uptick in a trend that's been going on since before the dawn of the new millennium.

Looking back all the way to the mid-1990s, GTA sales and home prices have been on an upward trajectory, according to some pretty eye-popping figures published in RE/MAX Canada's new Quarter Century Market Report.

The report looks back at the market over the last 25 years, starting all the way in the Happy Gilmore era of 1996 when Toronto and surrounding area homes were comparatively dirt cheap.

The same year Tupac Shakur dropped the first-ever rap double album, All Eyez on Me, the average GTA home price was just $198,150. Even adjusted for inflation ($327,172.67 in 2022 dollars) prices were still a whole lot more reasonable in '96 than the seven-figure averages seen today.

A quarter-century later, GTA prices have climbed to a Scrooge McDuck-level average of $1,095,475 in 2021, at a compound annual growth rate of 7.08 per cent.

That's a 453 per cent increase over 1996 prices.

Since 1996, the average price of a home in the GTA has increased 453% and sales have doubled. For more on what has impacted the GTA housing market over the last 25 years, read our new GTA Quarter Century Market Report. ➡️ https://t.co/LfIjGodt6T

— RE/MAX Canada (@REMAXca) February 23, 2022

During that 1996-2021 timeframe, the report found that over two million homes were sold in Toronto and its surrounding suburbs, with a combined value exceeding $1.1 trillion.

That roughly correlates with the population increase of the Toronto census metropolitan area from 4,263,759 to 6,202,225, a jump of 45 per cent.

Christopher Alexander, president at RE/MAX Canada, notes that the market's performance during the last 25 years "has been nothing short of remarkable," adding that the market grew through a "time period characterized by the tech meltdown of 2000, 9/11, SARS, the Great Recession of 2008, Ontario's Fair Housing Plan and the on-going pandemic."

And it's only set to get more expensive. RE/MAX predicts more gains in the average home price for 2022, projected to increase by over $100K this year alone to $1,160,491.